coach educator orthodontist weightlifter author
Peter T. George was born on June 29, 1929, in Akron, Ohio, and was of Macedonian descent. He began training in weightlifting as a boy and quickly developed within the competitive weightlifting culture of postwar Ohio. By fourteen he had won an Ohio state championship, and at fifteen he became the first teenager to clean and jerk 300 pounds officially.
George attended Kent State University before continuing to dental school at The Ohio State University. Kent State, founded in 1910 as a teacher-training institution, had developed into a comprehensive public university by the period of George’s studies. The Ohio State University, established in 1870 as a land-grant institution, combined professional education with research and operated one of the major university systems in the American Midwest.
George became one of the leading American weightlifters of the 1940s and 1950s. He won the national senior title at sixteen and the 1947 World Championship at seventeen. He competed in ten World Championships and three Olympic Games, winning World Championships in 1947, 1951, 1953, 1954, and 1955, while finishing second in 1949 and 1950. He also won middleweight gold at the 1951 and 1955 Pan American Games.
At the 1948 London Olympics, George won silver in the middleweight division. At Helsinki in 1952, he won gold with a 400-kilogram total and established Olympic records in the snatch, clean and jerk, and total. He returned to the podium with silver at Melbourne in 1956. Across World and Olympic competition, he accumulated ten medals and set four world records, including three in the clean and jerk and one in the total.
After his competitive career, George practiced orthodontics in Hawaii and taught in dental education. He served as an assistant professor of stomatology and later as a faculty member at the University of Hawaiʻi John A. Burns School of Medicine, whose medical school serves Hawaiʻi and the Pacific region. He was selected to coach the United States Olympic weightlifting team for the 1980 Moscow Games, though the team did not compete because of the American boycott.
George won the middleweight gold medal at the 1952 Summer Olympics in Helsinki and silver medals at the 1948 London and 1956 Melbourne Games, making him a three-time Olympic medalist.
He won five World Championships, in 1947, 1951, 1953, 1954, and 1955, and finished second at the World Championships in 1949 and 1950.
He won middleweight gold medals at the 1951 Pan American Games in Buenos Aires and the 1955 Pan American Games in Mexico City.
George set four world records during his weightlifting career: three in the clean and jerk and one in the total.
He helped popularize the squat snatch through instruction and authorship, contributing to the transition from the traditional split style toward the squat style in modern Olympic weightlifting.
(George wrote and republished this instructional work on t...)
2018George’s published writing presented Olympic-style weightlifting as a discipline requiring strength, speed, coordination, balance, and technically precise movement. His advocacy of the squat snatch reflected a belief that careful instruction and sound technique could improve both performance and the accessibility of the lift.
Physical Characteristics: He was approximately 172 centimeters tall and competed in the middleweight division at roughly 73 to 75 kilograms.
George was the brother of Jim George, who also competed internationally in weightlifting. He was married to Lazarina George and had sons named Barton and Tryan George.
