Update – Events and competitors now available here.
We’re a little late to bring you this news (for which we apologise profusely!) but it turns out the rumours of an early WSM in April weren’t early enough!
It’s now all but been confirmed that World’s Strongest Man 2014 will be happening in late March in Los Angeles (not Malaysia as we originally expected). What does this mean? Firstly, there’s only time to squeeze in a couple of Giant’s Live qualifiers – the British is happening on 15 March. If someone does qualify at the British it would only give them a couple of days’ notice until they had to ship themselves off to the US of A. Secondly, its awfully soon after the monstrously heavy Arnold Strongman Classic which is set to take place on 1 March. Competitors at the Arnold will have been training hard for the static-centric event and it wouldn’t be at all surprising if the strongmen competing had neglected the moving events that are all too common in WSM. The arguably almost-too-heavy Arnold Classic will likely cause a few injuries too so we suspect there’ll be quite a few reserves lined up for WSM – just in case!
So, without the Giants Live qualifiers, who is competing? Well… we don’t really know! We’ve put together a list of athletes below, some more confirmed than others:
- Brian Shaw (defending champion – he’ll surely be there)
- Big Z (you can’t have a WSM competition without this veteran)
- Lalas (he consistently puts in a good performance and was so close to the trophy in 2012)
- Misha (we’re sure the crowd pleaser will have an invite)
- Mike Burke (late bloomer Burke deserves a spot too)
- Nick Best (often crops up at WSM and probably will this time too)
- Terry Hollands (this man loves his WSM finals and we’ve heard on the grapevine he’s got an invite)
- Laurence Shaleihi (the big squatter who has apparently gotten the nod from IMG and been invited)
- Eddie Hall (the British static monster that is Zangief reincarnated has also apparently been invited)
- Mark Felix (old age doesn’t stop this chap putting in world class performance and he’s had an invite too – or so we’ve heard)
- Robert Oberst (this bearded fellow is home grown and we expect they’ll be quite a few Amercans at this year’s contest)
- Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson (Game of Thrones should have finished filming by March so this guy will be there representing Iceland)
- Jerry Pritchett (another American, and pretty strong too!)
- Dave Ostlund (apparently this chap has confirmed his invite on Facebook – he has been out injured for a few years so it’ll be interesting to see if he can keep up with the pack)
- Dimitar Savatinov (probably competing as an American but WSM may choose to spice things up and have him down as Bulgarian)
- Krzysztof Radzikowski (this Polish chap was there last year and we suspect he’ll be back again this time)
- Johannes Årsjö (the winner of last year’s Giants Live competition in Norway is sure to make an appearance – they’ll need more than just Americans for it to be a proper competition!)
- Martin Wildauer (3rd in his qualifying heat at last year’s WSM, he’ll surely be back for more this time)
- Lauri Nami (the Estonian wasn’t too far behind the qualifiers in his WSM 2013 heat)
- Warrick Brant (if a man is going to represent Australia its probably going to be this guy)
- Graham Hicks (put in a pretty good performance in WSM 2013 and has apparently been invited as a reserve)
- Lloyd Renals (also a pretty decent performance in WSM 2013, also a reserve)
There were 30 athletes at last year’s World’s Strongest Man and we’ve only got 20 “probably-maybes” on our list. We suspect a few more WSM 2013 competitors will be invited back but with none of them having put in a particularly stand-out performance its hard to say who it’ll be.
If there’s one thing we’re pretty sure of, China’s Wu Long won’t be there.
Know who is/isn’t competing at WSM 2014? Comment below and we’ll update our list. Thanks!
