Jouni Johannes Grönman (born 17 May 1962), is a Finnish former

weightlifter Olympic weightlifting, or Olympic-style weightlifting (officially named Weightlifting), is a sport in which athletes compete in lifting a barbell loaded with weight plates from the ground to overhead, with each athlete trying to successfully lift ...

who competed at four

Olympic Games The modern Olympic Games or Olympics (french: link=no, Jeux olympiques) are the leading international sporting events featuring summer and winter sports competitions in which thousands of athletes from around the world participate in a var ...

won a bronze medal at the

1984 Summer Olympics The 1984 Summer Olympics (officially the Games of the XXIII Olympiad and also known as Los Angeles 1984) were an international multi-sport event held from July 28 to August 12, 1984, in Los Angeles, California, United States. It marked the secon ...

in Los Angeles. Grönman was born and trained in

Pori ) , website www.pori.fi Pori (; sv, Björneborg ) is a city and municipality on the west coast of Finland. The city is located some from the Gulf of Bothnia, on the estuary of the Kokemäki River, west of Tampere, north of Turku and north-w ...

, on the west coast of Finland. A lightweight, he was a 15-time Finnish champion and won five Nordic titles. He started competing internationally as a weightlifter 1983, with a fifth placing at the

European Championships The European Championships is a multi-sport tournament which brings together the existing European Championships of some of the continent's leading sports every four years. The inaugural edition in 2018 was staged by the host cities of Berlin, ...

and was sixth at the

World Championships A world championship is generally an international competition open to elite competitors from around the world, representing their nations, and winning such an event will be considered the highest or near highest achievement in the sport, game, ...

. He won a silver medal at the 1984 European Championships, which was followed soon after by his first appearance in the Olympics.

Olympic career

Due to the Soviet boycott, the top four placed lifters from the World Championships were absent for the 1984 Olympics, so Grönman came into the event as one of the favourites. He had the final lift of the competition and although he got bar to his shoulders was unable to get it over his head to better China's Yao Jingyuan. Instead he won a bronze medal with an earlier 312.5 kg effort, the same total of the silver medalist

Andrei Socaci Andrei Socaci (born 19 June 1966) is a retired Romanian weightlifter. After winning a silver medal at the 1984 Olympics as a lightweight he moved up to the middleweight division and won nine medals at the world and European championships between ...

, who got second place on account of his body weight being less than Grönman's. It was only the second Olympics that Finland had won a weightlifting medal, he and heavyweight lifter Pekka Niemi's bronze medals were the first since

Kaarlo Kangasniemi Kaarlo Olavi Kangasniemi (born 4 February 1941) is a retired Finnish weightlifter. Between 1968 and 1972 he won one Olympic, two world and two European titles in the 90 kg division, becoming the only Finnish weightlifter to win either an Ol ...

won gold in 1968. He represented Finland in a further three Olympics. In

1988 File:1988 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: The oil platform Piper Alpha explodes and collapses in the North Sea, killing 165 workers; The USS Vincennes (CG-49) mistakenly shoots down Iran Air Flight 655; Australia celebrates its Australian ...

he did not register a successful lift, but in

1992 File:1992 Events Collage V1.png, From left, clockwise: 1992 Los Angeles riots, Riots break out across Los Angeles, California after the Police brutality, police beating of Rodney King; El Al Flight 1862 crashes into a residential apartment buildi ...

he finished in fifth position overall. His final appearance came in

1996 File:1996 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: A Centennial Olympic Park bombing, bomb explodes at Centennial Olympic Park in Atlanta, set off by a radical Anti-abortion violence, anti-abortionist; The center fuel tank explodes on TWA Flight 8 ...

and he was the oldest competitor in the field at the age of 34. He finished in 17th position.

References

External links

Jouni Grönman
at Sports-Reference {{DEFAULTSORT:Gronman, Jouni 1962 births Living people Finnish male weightlifters Olympic weightlifters for Finland Olympic bronze medalists for Finland Medalists at the 1984 Summer Olympics Weightlifters at the 1984 Summer Olympics Weightlifters at the 1988 Summer Olympics Weightlifters at the 1992 Summer Olympics Weightlifters at the 1996 Summer Olympics Sportspeople from Pori Olympic medalists in weightlifting