The Worlds Strongest Man Competition This Year

Once again, this year’s Worlds Strongest Man tournament will be sponsored by whey protein manufacturer Met-Rx, the leader in sports nutrition. The event will be held at Wingate University in North Carolina, the first university to ever host the world’s premier strength athletics competition.

The World’s Strongest Man has to be accepted as the biggest event of its kind every year, with athletes taking part in a brutal contest. The events include an amazing array of strength and endurance challenges, tasking all forms of strength exercise, from extreme squats and lateral raises to pulling trucks and lifting cars. In the end, one athlete will be crowned Worlds Strongest man.

Now entering its 34th year, the series is produced by IMG Media, an arm of the global sports, entertainment and media company IMG. The competition is certainly long lasting; in fact this year will be the 34th. People all over the world will be tuning in to watch the event on television. Some of the previous exotic destinations where Worlds Strongest Man has been held include Malaysia and Mauritius as well as China and Zambia. Winners become instant legends; previous favourites include Magnus ver Magnusson who won the competition 4 times during the 1990s as well as Briton Geoff Capes who was also an Olympic shot putter and highland games contestant.

Wingate University will be hosting the event and various locations around their campus. Students of the university that are studying both sports science and communications will benefit according to the university president, Dr Jerry McGee. Students will be able to attend and spectate as well as meet the athletes and gain first hand insight in to the production of a global television broadcast. Each event will also be open to the public.

Seeing the things that competitors put their body though sometimes leaves me wondering if I am watching a sport or torture! I can barely carrying my shopping after a long day, so the farmers walk where athletes carry up to 170 kilograms in each hand in a walking race seems particularly challenging. Maybe the fridge walk will sound more to your liking, where the competitor has a fridge full of weights on either side of their body attached to a yolk across their shoulders. Again the object of the event is to travel at speed. Tossing the caber is a great event which doesn’t seem anywhere near as unpleasant as many others. The crucifix seems the worst, where the athletes hold weights out either side of their body with upright arms until they can hold no longer. Every year though, the crowd will go wild for the truck or aeroplane pull. Seeing the strongest men in the world pulling a jumbo jet is about as good as it gets.

Bruce Wilhelm was the first ever world’s strongest man, he won the competition at Universal Studios in California. Wilhelm, a former Olympic Weightlifter from the United States, repeated as winner in 1978. During the early years, perhaps the most impressive champion to be discovered was Bill Kazmaier who won the competition several times. Kazmaier, a former world power lifting champion, overwhelmed his competition while winning the championship over three consecutive years, from 1980 through 1982.