Pashinyan attends wake ceremony of Yuri Vardanyan

YEREVAN, NOVEMBER 13, ARMENPRESS. Caretaker Prime Minister of Armenia Nikol Pashinyan today attended the civilian wake ceremony of Yuri Vardanyan, the retired weightlifter and politician who died November 2 in the U.S. aged 62, the PM’s office said.

Theceremony took place at the Karen Demirchyan Sports and Concert Complex.

Vardanyan will be buried in the Komitas pantheon.

Yuri Vardanyan died from cancer. As a weightlifter, Vardanyan reached numerous heights by winning World and European championships throughout late 1970s through the 1980s. He won gold at the 1980 summer Olympics He earned the titleHonored Master of Sports of the USSRin 1977 and was awarded theOrder of Leninin 1985. In 1994 he was elected member of theInternational Weightlifting FederationHall of Fame.

He became the world's first weightlifter to achieve a 400 kilogram total in the 82.5kg weight category.

In 1985 alone, he set 43 world records.

Years later after retiring from sports, he began a career in politics.

In 2009, President of Armenia Serzh Sargsyan appointed Yuri Vardanyan as his advisor. After four years in office, he was appointed minister of sports and youth affairs, a position he held only for a year. He was later appointed Ambassador of Armenia to Georgia in 2014 and served until 2017.

Edited and translated by Stepan Kocharyan