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I really liked what I was doing, and began to realize that coaching was my calling so I just stayed with it. <br>The word spread quickly that Schmitz was an intelligent coach who could motivate athletes to perform their best at competitions. Soon the personable Schmitz found himself working with Ken Patera, a super-heavyweight lifter (over 242 pounds bodyweight) who became the first American to clean and jerk 500 pounds and the only American to Olympic press over 500 pounds (505.5). Many weightlifting experts believed that Patera had the best chance of any American lifter to defeat the famous Russian champion Vasily Alexeev. Unfortunately, an injury kept Patera from seriously challenging Alexeev in the 1972 Olympics, and a commitment to professional wrestling closed the door for good on any future Olympic battles for Patera.<br>In 1972 Schmitz was able to buy out his partners, and he moved the gym four and a half blocks to an old neighborhood on Valencia Street. He also shortened the name of the gym to simply the Sports Palace. His new locatin turned out to be a good one, enabling him to make enough profit to travel to numerous national and international competitions throughout the year. The new gym was also close to Mission High School, where Ken Clark was then enrolled. hile in school Clark walked into the Sports Palace looking for a place to train, and Schmitz coached him to the Olympic games and to American records of 363 in the snatch and 470 in the clean and jerk at 220 pounds bodyweight.<br>As Schmitz s stable of Sports Palace athletes continued to grow, his goals began to change.  As my team got better, I began to think that we might be able to win the national championships, says Schmitz.  That was in the late  70s, and it took us until 1982 to win the national championships. The significance of this achievement is that his team beat the York Barbell Club, which had won the championships for 29 years in a row. The York team was composed of athletes throughout the country who were sponsored by York, whereas almost all Schmitz s athletes were from the San Francisco Bay Area and were dues-paying members at Schmitz s gym. Proving the victory was not a fluke, the Spord the World Anti-Doping Association, which is doing some international drug testing. It will never be totally clean no sport is ever going to be totally clean but as for the top lifters in the US, there s abslutely no way that we can take drugs because of how often we re drug tested. Most other countries don t have the random tests like us, so it would be possible for them to still take drugs although I m not saying that they are.<br><br>BFS: What s the training atmosphere like at the Olympic training center?<br>Hamman: Everybody i here to be better, so in the gym there s always kind of a psyched feeling. When I m home I train by myself, and I find I cannot lift as much weight.<br><br>BFS: Was it tough fr you to leave your home to come to Colorado Springs?<br>Hamman: I had never been away from home until I moved here. I ve got two older brothers and they re married and have kids, so I have all these nieces and nephews and it was hard for me to move off and know that I wouldn t see them except maybe twice a year. But overall it s been good they re all really supportive of me.<br><br>BFS: What did your new coach Dragomir Ciorosian do for you when you moved to Colorado Springs?<br>Hamman: My lifting was going pretty well already, but Dragomir made some little changes, like keeavyweights, having coached three of the four Americans who have clean and jerked 500 pounds. In addition to coa