Better late than never, below is an accidentally-forgotten-to-be-published writeup from last month’s World Deadlift Championships.
11 July saw the return of the Europe’s Strongest Man competition and, with it, the World Deadlift Championships.
The World Deadlift Championships aimed to find the very best deadlifter (strongman rules – hitch and straps allowed) in the world. Competitors were invited from Strongman and Powerlifting and, with a change to the previous year, wildcard entries were allowed on the back of youtube demonstrations of their deadlift prowess!
When this year’s World Deadlift Championships were first announced the line-up sounded pretty impressive: Eddie Hall, Benedict Magnusson, Zydrunas Savickas, Andy Bolton, Brian Shaw… the list goes on!.
Unfortunately by the time the competition came around Big Z, Shaw and Magnusson had withdrawn (Shaw to get married and Magnusson for an injury. We’re not sure what Z’s excuse was!). Even American youtube sensation George Leeman had to pull out after a series of unfortunate events with his passport and delayed flights.
Nevertheless, the competition did still have Eddie Hall – the current Strongman deadlift world record holder – and a number of other rather large and very strong men!
The World Deadlift Championships doubled up as a standalone competition and the first event of Europe’s Strongest Man. The eventual line-up looked like this:
- Eddie Hall – current record holder
- Hafthór Björnsson – winner of last year’s Europe’s Strongest Man and AKA the Mountain from Game of Thrones
- Mark Felix – veteran strongman and renowned deadlift repper
- Krzysztof Radzikowski
- Andy Bolton (Deadlift only)
- Jerry Prichett (Deadlift only)
- Terry Hollands – last minute entry after announcing his come back to strongman
- Dimitar Savatinov
- Luke Stoltman
- Dainis Zageris
- Matjaž Belšak
- Rauno Heinla (Deadlift only)
The deadlift opened on 360kg. To cut a heavy story short, the results were as follows:
- Eddie Hall – 463kg/1020lb (breaking his own World Record by 1kg)
- Hafthór Björnsson – 450kg/990lb (a 30kg personal best!)
- Rauno Heinla – 435kg/957lb
- Jerry Pritchett – 435kg/957lb
- Andy Bolton – 420kg/924lb
- Mark Felix – 400kg/880lb
- Krzystof Radzikowski – 400kg/880lb
- Terry Hollands – 400kg/880lb
- Dainis Zageris – 400kg/880lb
- Matjaž Belšak – 400kg/880lb
- Dimitar Savatinov – 360kg/792lb
- Luke Stoltman – failed 360kg
