By all accounts, last month’s Cariboo’s Strongest Man competition exceeded all expectations.
The unique, athletic spectacle attracted 18 competitors from throughout B.C.’s Interior, along with about 50 to 60 spectators, who lined the sidelines in the parking lot outside the Canadian Wholesale Club in Williams Lake for the event.
“It was way above and beyond what I expected,” said one of the event’s organizers, powerlifter and strongman Tyson Delay of Williams Lake. “Last year our main event only had eight competitors. This year we had 18. We had one guy — he was literally coming in to do his shopping in the morning and walked by, and was like: ‘Hey, that’s cool. I want to try. it.’ So he went home to grab his running shoes and came back. And, he did pretty well, too.”
Delay credited the work of his partner-in-crime in organizing the Cariboo’s Strongest Man, Mathew Crowther of Williams Lake, for helping make the event a success.
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“He did about 90 per cent of the organizing with the hands on stuff, talking to people and getting sponsors, so he was a massive help in that,” Delay said.
“All in all the event went really well. We had no injures, which was nice, and a lot of support from the community, and it was really cool to see.”
Athletes in the Cariboo’s Strongest Man, meanwhile, competed in five events, broken down by weight class into divisions.
The event began with a ‘Flip and Drag’ medley, where participants flip over a tire five times, then proceed to drag a heavy sled.
“You drag the sled which, ironically, was another tire, backwards for 80 feet,” Delay described. “A lot of people underestimated that event. If you grab a 200-pound sled and start pulling it backwards it’s hard to move, so it was really neat to see the guys try to work around that. It’s a real power and cardio-based event.”
In the Flip and Drag, super heavyweights flipped a 280 pound tire to a 720-pound tire.
Next up was the Overhead Press medley where competitors lifted a car axle, a log and a giant dumbbell with just one arm.
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“The dumbbell, only two guys total were able to press it,” Delay said, noting the heaviest dumbbell was 110 pounds for the super heavyweights. “Imagine that, lifting a small person over your head with one arm. That event seemed to stop a lot more guys in their track than I expected.”
Third on the list of events was The Farmer’s Walk.
“You carry a heavy weight in each hand ranging from 110 pounds per hand all the way up to 250 pounds a hand for the big boys,” Delay said. “In total, a 500-pound pickup off the floor and then you have to run 80 feet without losing your grip. One of the super heavies, a 315-pound guy, picked up the weight and literally sprinted with it to the finish. It was pretty impressive to see.”
And fourth, the classic strongman Truck Pull.
Delay said the Truck Pull event was super popular, and they put effort into making it even better this year than during the event’s inaugural running last year.
Organizer made the course a lot longer, and also parked the truck in a dip in the pavement for added difficulty, Delay said.
Lightweights pulled a regular pickup truck, middleweights pulled a super duty dually and super heavyweights pulled a semi truck.
“It was pretty neat seeing a bunch of big guys pulling a semi truck,” Delay said. “It was 17,000 pounds. That’s a pretty big number but, to be honest, the middleweights’ truck weighed in at 9,000 pounds and the regular truck was 5,500 so, they were all pretty decent in weight.”
Lastly, the Stone Medley capped off the events for competitors. Delay said this event featured competitors lifting natural stones, and atlas stones (large, round concrete stones).
“We are just really happy with how everything turned out,” he said. “Couldn’t have asked for much better, and hopefully we can do it again.”
Winning in the lightweight men’s division was Cole Speer.
Garrett LeRoy took the men’s middleweight title, while Kyle Cook was the light heavyweight champion.
In the super heavyweight class it was Branden Hussey winning the title of Cariboo’s Strongest Man while, in the women’s division, it was Chantelle Halliday being crowned Cariboo’s Strongest Woman.
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