In March 1891, in open competition against champions from Brussels, Hamburg, England, Vienna, Italy, and Berlin, E. L. Levy won the first World Weightlifting Competition. The threeday
event consisted primarily of repetition and alternate pressing with 56 or 84 pounds in each hand.

Just two months earlier, at the age of 40, he won the first British Amateur Weightlifting Championship. Between 1891 and 1894, Levy set 14 World records.

In 1896, at the first modern Olympics in Athens, he served as a member of the International Weightlifting Jury. Levy is founder of the Amateur Gymnastics Federation of Great Britain and Ireland.