Joe Dube obit

Joe Dube, 1944-2025: Jacksonville's weightlifting world champion won Olympic medal

Terry Parker High graduate won weightlifting world title

 

He was not on the list.

Joe Dube, the Jacksonville weightlifter who worked his way to a world championship and a bronze medal at the Mexico City Olympics in 1968, died on Sept. 8 at the age of 81.

His son, Joseph Dube Jr., announced his passing in a post to Facebook. The elder Dube, a longtime resident of Baker County, had suffered from various health issues in recent years.

Born in Calhoun County in the Panhandle before his family's move to Jacksonville, Dube wasn't always an obvious candidate for super-heavyweight world champion. He stood 5-7 and 135 pounds in his early days attending Terry Parker High School in Arlington, but bulked up to 325 pounds within less than a decade through an intense regimen. At the peak of his career, he ate five meals and drank three quarts of milk per day.

"The first time I tried a lift, I couldn't pick up 120 pounds," Dube recalled for a 1976 Times-Union feature. "I was frustrated and I wanted to excel so I kept working."

Success arrived fast. He won multiple state and regional competitions in the early 1960s, becoming the first teenager on record to press more than 400 pounds in 1964.

From there, he achieved history at the 1969 World Weightlifting Championships in Warsaw, Poland, winning the super-heavyweight division with an aggregate lift total of 1,273 pounds: 446 in the bench press, 358 1/2 in the snatch and 468 1/2 in the clean-and-jerk. He remains the United States' most recent male world champion in the sport, and earned the national weightlifter of the year honor.

Dube was a favorite at the 1968 Olympics in Mexico City, but after an intestinal illness at the event caused his weight to plummet from 334 pounds to 315 pounds in fewer than two weeks, he had to fight to achieve a combined lift of 1,223 pounds for the bronze behind Leonid Zhabotinsky of the Soviet Union and Serge Reding of Belgium. Only three American men have received Olympic weightlifting medals since.

His world title catapulted him into celebrity status for a time, including an appearance on "The Tonight Show" with Johnny Carson and an award from then-President Richard Nixon. Nixon, the Times-Union reported at the time, told Dube and American national team colleague Bob Bednarski they would "be great on an offensive line."

"Ed McMahon and Johnny Carson tried to pick up the weight I lifted [at the World Championships] at the same time," Dube recalled in a Times-Union story in 1986, "and they couldn't even get it off the ground."

The 1969 world championship and Olympic bronze were only two of the many honors during Dube's career in international weightlifting. He placed second at the 1967 world championships (only a tiebreaker against him, due to his greater weight, cost him the gold), won the 1967 Pan-American Games with an event-record 1,163-pound total lift and set six world records, including 462 1/2 pounds in the two-arm press at the U.S. Olympic Trials on Aug. 31, 1968 in York, Pa.

His career hit obstacles: an elbow injury from an attempt at a national-record snatch at the 1972 U.S. Olympic Trials, then knee troubles in the ensuing years. But after infrequent competitions through the middle and late 1970s, including an appearance on the 1979 World's Strongest Man competition on CBS Sports, he came back to win the American Cup in Honolulu in 1980.

He also served as an official after his competitive career ended in 1982, including a role at the United States Weightlifting Championships at Jacksonville's Civic Auditorium on May 3-4, 1986.

Dube, who worked as a records supervisor at Independent Life following his Olympic career, entered the Jacksonville Sports Hall of Fame in 1991. The Times-Union included Dube at No. 22 in the Jax Greatest 100 series published in the summer of 2024.

A viewing is scheduled for 10 a.m. on Saturday, Sept. 13 at Guerry Forbes Funeral Home in Macclenny, followed by a funeral at 11 a.m. at the same site.