The award is decided by a popular vote of fans.
Rostami won first place by a whopping twenty thousand votes, three times more than the second place Lasha Talakhadze from Georgia. Third place went to the Kazakh weightlifter Nijat Rahimov.
Thailand’s Sopita Tanasan won the award for female Lifter of the Year, beating out China’s Deng Wei and Hsu Shu-Ching in second and third places.
Deng lost by around 1,200 votes, while only fifty-five votes separated Deng and Hsu.
Rostami has coached himself and trained alone in the past year.
He won a gold medal in men’s 85 kg category at the 2016 Summer Olympics Games in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
