Jeg må bare lime inn denne ....
Dunno if this is the appropriate thread for writeups, but I dont see anywhere better, so here goes:
All I've got to say is - WOW! DID THAT JUST HAPPEN?!? And I'm not even talking about the finish either. That, as you can probably guess, I'm a little bummed over. But the WHOLE experience was just unbelievable. Hands down the best vacation I've ever taken. I like the beach and I've visited some pretty interesting and VERY different countries, but a whole week of strongman was JUST AWESOME. My advice, for anyone who's a true fan of this sport (and I dont mean "true fan" in a derogatory sense, there are plenty who enjoy competing, just maybe not sitting in front of the tv and watching 5 or 6 hours of WSM of IFSA 05, or youtube videos etc.) But if you are a true fan of strongman and enjoy sitting around and watching heavy stuff get lifted and being around strong guys, you've GOT to go to WSM one year. Find the money. Some quick hits:
Mariusz dad cracks me up. He's this little but RIPPED dude running around in an all red "Team Pudzian" jump suit filming everything. Why has ESPN not done a full segment on him? Unacceptable. I got my picture with him, obviously.
Brian Shaw might be approaching Dave Ostlund's level of "nicest guy in strongman"
Jimmy Marku's thighs might be thicker than my waist. And his calves have got to be legitimately over 20"
Best performances:
Kevin Nee came as close as a human being could come to loading the sandbag without having it count. That sucked.
Travis on the kegs. Wait'll you see it
Bergman completely SOLD OUT to get the fifth finger. COMPLETE committment to the lift. I've gotta see if I can get a picture one of the british fans took of Jason, as the fifth finger is going over, just completely laid out almost parallel to the ground sending the fifth finger down.
Behind-the-scenes stuff like Derek giving Siders pointers on the truck pull are awesome. The whole "helping out your competitor" thing is not overplayed on tv, its absolutely for real. I think every guy who squatted went out there with another competitor to help him with his suit, wraps, etc.
Group 3, Mariusz group was INSANE. THREE guys squatting 7 barrels and THREE guys getting double digits on the axle. I think only one guy in hte other group squatted all 7 barrels, and NOBODY else got 10 on the axle which leads me to:
Mariusz' axle. To set the stage, nobody had gotten 10 reps, in fact, I dont think anyone had even gotten 9 when Siders and LPJ stepped up to hte platform. They had an all-out battle going neck-and-neck eventually tying at 10. Then Mariusz comes up, and what was so impressive wasnt that he got 11 reps, but that his 11th rep looked the exact same as his first. I dont know if he couldve gotten 12 in the time limit, but he looked just as strong and fresh at the end of 60 seconds as he did at the beginning.
Arild's stones. Or at least that's what I'm told. I missed it because I blinked.
Just wait till you see the powerstairs. All I'm going to say is that I personally walked up those steps, and they are deep, and it shouldnt be humanly possible to go up those steps without setting the powerstairs implement down twice on each step: Once to get it on top of the step, and once to carry it the depth of the step, to set up for the pick to the top of the next one.
Dave and Derek were back and forth on the fingals, what an awesome run
Ostlund's deadlift. I just had a feeling, just like Pfister made a massive improvement on his deadlift in 06, I had a feeling Dave might have something similar in store.
Poundstone's log. neck-and-neck with mariusz until poundstone got one ahead of him. Mariusz body language/facial expression was like "are you kidding me?" From there every time mariusz went for another rep, derek just lapped another one, popped it up, and waited to see if pudz would go for another rep.
Chicks dig Stefan Solvi Peterssen(sp?) and Johannes Arho(sp?)
I think Mariusz gets a bum rap on the whole bad attitude/unfriendly/whatever thing. He signed EVERY autograph and took EVERY picture, and believe me, there were a TON of them. Hands down, far and away the crowd favorite of all the non-US competitors
Speaking of crowd favorites, they LOVED their WV. I dunno if Pfister wants to go into politics, but if he wanted to, he'd have some good backing
People said this WSM was run much better than last years. Bigger crowd, stuck to the schedule better ... so I guess I picked the right year to go.
LPJ is STRONG.
Matty Parkes is a good guy to watch UFC with
Christian Savoie may not speak much English, but he's a pretty funny dude.
Jarek Dimek really seems to genuinely love the crowd. And if his moves at the club are any indication, he might be the next polish strongman on Dancing with the Stars
Speaking of dancing, one of the girls from Team Bergmann can DANCE.
After seeing the level of interest they managed to raise for a week long contest, held at the oddest times of the day, I actually think there might be a possibility that strongman might, at some point, go main stream. Even tho theres a huge freakshow "well, when else will I get to see this" appeal to it, I've gotta believe that if the level of interest in Charleston WV, and especially considering the success of the MSG show is any indication, there might actually be a sustainable market for 3-4 big annual shows each year, maybe culminating in a grand prix or championship or something. And I've been very VERY skeptical of that in the past
Hmmmm, that's all I've got for now, I'll try to get my pics up later.
Legg spesielt merke til setningen i fet skrift ...
