Foreword: The 2026 IPF World Open Equipped Championships produced two distinct best-lifter stories. Ukraine’s Kostiantyn Musiienko led the men with 1,064.5 kg at 93 kg and 115.443 GL points. The United States’ Kelsey McCarthy led the women with 655 kg at 69 kg and 113.882 GL points. Those federation coefficients compare performances across classes; they do not make a 69 kg and 93 kg total directly interchangeable.
Three races, three answers
Musiienko: where was the winning margin?
His 352 kg world-record bench was the signature lift. The complete 1,064.5 kg total finished 39.5 kg ahead of Volodymyr Rysiiev in the 93 kg class.
McCarthy: what separated the 69 kg podium?
McCarthy totalled 655 kg, 77.5 kg ahead of Marte Elverum Aaser and 87.5 kg ahead of Katharina Schlagbauer. The IPF’s official Instagram report calls it her seventh open world title.
Who won the team titles?
Ukraine led the men on 51 points. Chinese Taipei led the women on 42. They are separate championships, not one combined table.
Musiienko turned the record bench into a complete win
Musiienko’s 1,064.5 kg total was built from a 430 kg squat, 352 kg bench press and 282.5 kg deadlift. The bench and total are marked as world records in the federation material. More important competitively, he converted enough of the other two lifts to make the record count toward a winning total. Equipped lifting magnifies both the potential load and the cost of technical error: supportive kit, commands, rack settings and attempt timing all have to work together.
Rysiiev finished on 1,025 kg and Ole Jonas Skår on 955 kg. That places the winning margin at 39.5 kg over second and 109.5 kg over third. Musiienko also led the men’s cross-class GL table, so the result was not merely the heaviest raw number in one division.
What should a recreational lifter take from this?
Not the load. The transferable lesson is that one standout lift does not rescue a broken meet. Musiienko’s record bench mattered because he also banked a competitive squat and deadlift under the same rules.
McCarthy’s seventh title was a decisive 69 kg performance
McCarthy’s 252.5 kg squat, 175 kg bench and 227.5 kg deadlift produced 655 kg. The federation’s official podium post lists Aaser at 577.5 kg and Schlagbauer at 567.5 kg. That is a substantial class victory, but the women’s best-lifter award still requires coefficient context: lighter athletes in other classes can outrank a larger raw total when bodyweight is accounted for.
Blanka Bartonkova’s 577.5 kg at 57 kg and Yen-Tzu Huang’s 562.5 kg were therefore relevant to the cross-class comparison. The coefficient does not say their lifts were identical. It answers a narrower sporting question: whose performance scored highest under the federation’s published formula.
Why show both the portrait and the official post?
The static image identifies McCarthy and remains visible if Instagram fails. The embedded original preserves the federation’s caption, podium context and direct attribution. Neither replaces the signed result book.
The supporting classes supplied real competitive tension
Not every title was a runaway. In the men’s 105 kg class, Knut Einar Skår reached 1,067.5 kg, Sergii Bilyi 1,052.5 kg, and Ian Bell and Nicki Lentz-Nielsen both 1,050 kg. A single successful attempt could move several places. Oleksii Bychkov won at 120 kg with 1,100 kg, the largest completed men’s total shown in the published file.
At 47 kg, Wei-Ling Chen and Frankmary Duno both totalled 480 kg. Chen’s lower bodyweight delivered the title under the published tiebreak. That is genuine drama without inventing a feud: same total, defined rule, different placing. The women’s record pages also identify junior and masters performances, which must remain separate from the open best-lifter result.
How should tied totals be read?
Use the federation’s class table and bodyweight tiebreak, not a social-media caption. A tie in kilograms does not mean the medal is shared when the rules specify a lower-bodyweight winner.
What happens next
The immediate administrative step is record ratification and any correction to the federation files. For athletes, Istanbul resets the international reference points heading into 2027. For readers, the useful guardrail is simple: do not compare raw totals across bodyweight classes, and do not compare equipped performances with classic powerlifting as though the conditions were identical.
What would make this report change?
A replacement IPF result book, a record-ratification update or an official correction to the podiums would trigger an update. Athlete posts can add colour, but cannot overrule the federation table.