Charles Vinci

Charles Vinci (born February 28, 1933, Cleveland, Ohio, U.S.—died June 13, 2018, Westlake, Ohio) was an American weightlifter who won two Olympic gold medals.

A native of Cleveland, Vinci, who stood 4 feet 11 inches (1.5 meters) tall, won seven U.S. weightlifting titles in the bantamweight (56-kg [123.5-pound]) division in 1954–56 and 1958–61. He won Pan American Games titles in 1955 and 1959. At the 1956 Olympic Games in Melbourne, Vinci won a gold medal with a world-record three-lift (snatch, clean and jerk, and overhead press) total of 342.5 kg (755.1 pounds). He won his second Olympic gold medal at Rome in 1960, setting an Olympic record for bantamweight and tying the world record with a 345-kg (760-pound) total. Vinci trained for the 1964 Tokyo Games, but a back injury kept him from competing. Sometimes dubbed “Mighty Mite,” Vinci held a total of seven world records and had held the distinction of being the last gold medal-winning American weightlifter until Tara Nott won gold in the women’s flyweight at the 2000 Games in Sydney.