Nijat Rahimov was down by 9 kilograms to Lyu Xiaojun, the 2012 Gold Medalist, in the 77kg weightlifting class final on Wednesday.

After Xiaojun's final lift, he began to celebrate thinking he had already won...

Picture: GOH CHAI HIN/AFP/Getty Images

...but Rahimov had other plans.

He moved up 12 kg to attempt a clean and jerk of 214kg.

In doing so he was attempting to break a 15-year world record by 4kg to win the Gold.

His expansive celebration and elation was shared frequently on Twitter and reddit.

However, there's a cloud overhanging this tale.

Rahimov only returned from a doping ban last year, while his country's team was almost excluded from this Olympics due to repeated failures in doping sample retests from 2008 and 2012.

The country was only allowed to compete because the cases weren't processed in time for this Games, the International Weightlifting Federation has said.

Indeed, Bronze medalist in Rahimov's class, Mohamed Mahmoud of Egypt, has already thrown suspicion over Rahimov's sudden improvement:

In a very short time it cannot happen like that.

Rahimov, meanwhile, credited his training schedule: