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THE WORLD’S STRONGEST MAN
Date
Mar 28, 2016
Posted by
Keleven School
Categories
Uncategorized

In this sport, men do the job of Tow Trucks & a Dumbbell looks like that… Hahaha!

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This sport of giants is something that has always fascinated me & this fascination led to me becoming the General Secretary of The Strongmen Federation Of India (SFI). In this blog, I will simply try and explain this sport to you & make you aware of the brief history behind it.

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Strong Man Strong Man 1

In the domain of sports there are 2 Broad Categories:
1. Endurance based
2. Strength & Power based

Many team sports such as Foot Ball are a combination of both.

But if one were to choose an event that was purely endurance based, The 42km run called as the MARATHON comes to mind. The great cycling race Tour De France falls under the bracket of Ultra Endurance.
When it comes to Pure Strength Sports, we have the iron games such as Weight Lifting & Power-Lifting.

Although there is a huge respect for the Endurance athletes who sometimes display the endurance of a horse, sometimes covering 42Kms in 2 hours… The question as to WHO IS THE STRONGEST MAN on the planet has an almost mythical allure to it. The title STRONGEST MAN OF THE WORLD has a Super Human ring to it.

Although World Champions in the Olympic Sport of Weight Lifting & Power Lifting are unbelievably strong, picking up some unimaginable weights, it is still debatable whether these Barbell hoisting Athletes are truly as strong in day to day life. This in no way means that these Athletes are NOT super strong, but just give a thought to how a child would imagine THE STRONGEST MAN IN THE WORLD to be. It would literally be something out of the pages of a MARVEL Super-Hero Comic Book.

Well 2 Scotsmen, David Webster & Dr. Douglas Edmunds (7-Times Scottish Shot Put & Discuss Throw Champion) in 1977 had this child like imagination and conceptualized “The World’s Strongest Men”, as it was originally named. They developed this property for the US TV network CBS. They had an amazingly unique concept to determine the super human who would be undisputedly THE STRONGEST MAN IN THE WORLD.

Weight-Lifting & Power Lifting only measure, a man’s strength by the ability of hoisting a loaded Barbell overhead in the Clean & Jerk and the Snatch or based on the maximum amount of weight lifted for a 1 Rep-Max in the Squat, Dead-Lift and a Bench-Press. It could be debated that this is a very limited way of measuring a man’s strength & may not accurately determine the winner as the strongest man in the World.

What Webster & Edmund conceptualized was simply out of the fantasy world. They conceptualized spectacular unheard of and never seen before events such as, a race of men pulling full size Bus’s, Men flipping cars, Lifting cars, Lifting impossible to grip round stones weighing 200 kilos. They invited all Strength Sports champions to compete.

They came from all strength disciplines such as Weight-Lifting, Power-Lifting, Shot-Put, etc. 2 legendary Body-Builders who have successfully competed in this grueling freaky sport were Franco Columbu & Lou Ferrigno.

There have been many winners of the Worlds Strongest Man Title. But a few legendary stand-outs who have each won the title multiple times are – Jon Paul Sigmarson (originally a champion Power Lifter) from Iceland who won it 4 times, Bill Kazmaier (originally a champion Power Lifter) from the US who won it 3 Times, Magnus Ver Magnusson (originally a champion Power Lifter) from Iceland who won it 4 times and Mariusz Pudzianowski (originally a champion Power Lifter) from Poland who won the title more times than anyone else with 5 titles. Pudzian is now an MMA competitor.

Iceland actually with its Viking roots has been the hotbed of the sport and probably has the highest percentage of supremely strong people despite its miniscule 300,000 population. Apart from hardwork, grit & determination plus and abnormal threshold of pain, this sport more than any other is genetically inclined & the Nordic races with their incredible structures mostly prevail.

This sport is a complete spectator sport as there is no person on this planet who would not be interested in seeing men perform Super Human tasks such as pulling buses, planes and boats, lifting and flipping cars, lifting 200 kilo stones & having races carrying almost a 1000 pounds on their shoulders. Due to its spectacular nature of super human feats, THE STRONGMAN sport soon became a BIG TV hit.

So this medley of events, that tested the strength of these champions against tons of load, such as a Bus and other seemingly impossible to lift odd objects became an undisputed measure of strength.
The winner of this medley of super human tasks has every right to be, proclaimed as THE STRONGEST MAN IN THE WORLD.

Kaizzad Capadia.


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