The Summer Olympics: Alexander Karelin

His Olympic foes call him King Kong or The Experiment. None of them have beaten him--ever

Ask Alexander Karelin to name his greatest challenge, and he will tell you about the time he outwrestled a refrigerator that weighed nearly twice as much as he did. Clamping a bear hug on the appliance, the 6-ft. 3-in., 286-lb. Russian hoisted it off the floor. "It was a huge fridge," he recalls, "and I carried it to my apartment up eight flights of stairs."

Humans have even less of a chance against Karelin, 32, a super-heavyweight Greco-Roman wrestler who has won gold medals in each of the past three Summer Games. In fact, the Siberian native has never lost...

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