[2] Lomakin was born to a miner in a remote village in Siberia and started training in weightlifting aged 18, while serving in the Soviet Army in the Far East.

In 1949 he moved to Leningrad and in 1952 won his first national and European titles and an Olympic gold medal.

Despite his successes in the 1950s, he developed alcoholism and for this reason was excluded from the 1956 Olympic team and later dishonorably discharged from the Soviet Army.

In the late 1960s he was arrested while trying to smuggle gold out of the Soviet Union and convicted to five years in prison.

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