Norbert Schemansky, one of the world’s greatest weight lifters and the first to win medals in four Olympic Games, all while scraping to make a living in a hometown, Dearborn, Mich., that more than 60 years ago greeted his achievements with a shrug, died on Tuesday at his home there. He was 92.

The Howe-Peterson Funeral Home in Dearborn confirmed his death.

Schemansky competed across four decades, winning competitions, breaking records and, with his 400-pound heaves, leaving spectators in awe. A bear of a man with a mild countenance, he could be instantly picked out of a bevy of musclemen in tights by his signature plastic-framed eyeglasses, as if Superman had shown up still wearing Clark Kent’s.

But there was no disguising his prowess.

“Norbert Schemansky is the greatest and strongest athlete I have ever seen,” his Cold War rival and fellow Olympian Yuri Vlasov of Ukraine was quoted as saying. Schemansky himself said, “One time I figured it out, and I’d lifted enough weight to lift the Queen Mary.”

At just under six feet tall and weighing 265 pounds or so, Schemansky had tree-trunk thighs, wrists like two-by-fours and, by all accounts, steel in his sinews since childhood. The Detroit Free Press called him “born strong.” At 11 years old he had gotten a job at a Detroit market unloading 100-pound bags of potatoes.