Lukin won the gold medal in the Super Heavyweight category at the 1984 Summer Olympics, held in Los Angeles.

He carried the Australian flag during the closing ceremony of the 1984 games, and remains Australia's only Olympic gold medalist for weightlifting.

Lukin was born in Sydney, but his family moved to the South Australian town of Port Lincoln when he was 5 years old.

Lukin was a tuna fisherman who shot to fame as a weightlifter in the 1980s, then returned to run the family fishing business.

In a bid to get healthier during the late 1980s, Lukin went on a diet and lost a lot of the weight that made him one of the top Super Heavyweight weightlifters in the world, claiming that his waist was now the size that his upper thighs were during the 1984 Olympic Games.