Strongman Archives

Some may have expected Jean-François Caron to take easy at Força Bruta on Sunday, given the fact that we are only 3 weeks away from the prestigious Arnold Strongman Classic. However, that's not in Caron's nature.

The Canadian set the tone in the Deadlift for reps, completing the entire carriage and doing an extra rep for a total of 6 lifts. According to Caron, the final weight was around 900 pounds. Rob Kearney and Rauno Heinla, who was dealing with a quadricep injury, only got 4 reps, while Dmitrii Skosyrskii couldn't get the fourth lift past his knees.

Then, the Keg Toss was as tricky as advertised! Skosyrskii finally cleared 5 after failing the fourth keg multiple times, while Heinla also got 5 but in a quicker time. Kearney was much quicker to 5 and it looked like he had more in the tank, but just like the other men, the sixth keg was a bit too much. Still, his time for 5 kegs was enough to put him into the lead. This left Caron, and he raced through the first 7 kegs before taking it easy... and finishing all 10! This gave him a commanding lead going into the final event, the Truck Pull.

The truck was 4 tons heavier than last year, and it showed. Skosyrskii, who weighs 125 kg, was barely able to get past the start line! Heinla, who is a bit heavier, went off to a very slow start but completed the course in 68 seconds, while the lighter Kearney settled for a very short distance. This left Caron, who used his 154 kg to pull the truck across the line over 20 seconds faster than Heinla for another win.

Overall, Caron scored a maximum of 12 points while Heinla, although he was given 3rd on the live broadcast, officially took 2nd ahead of Kearney. Skosyrskii finished 4th.

Caron and Kearney will both be at the Arnold Strongman Classic in 3 weeks. Stay tuned for more details!

As has been the case in previous years, Brazil will be the first stop of the season for some of the best pro strongmen in the world on Saturday, February 13 as the 10th edition of Força Bruta takes place.

Not all of the best athletes will be there, of course. As is tradition, only 4 strongmen have been invited to Cotia, in the state of São Paulo, to take part in the 3-event competition. The Força Bruta format (4 athletes, 3 events) has been unchanged since 2016 in order to fit within the live television show Esporte Espetacular, which airs on TV Globo - the largest commercial television network in Latin America and the second largest in the world.

An Interesting Mix of Athletes

Among the 4 competitors, only Rauno Heinla has participated in Força Bruta before. Last year, the Estonian was edged out for the overall victory by Russia’s Mikhail Shivlyakov, who sadly cannot make it to Força Bruta this year due to a plethora of injuries.

Shivlyakov has been replaced by his protégé, Dmitrii Skosyrskii, an impressive contender who nearly won the 2020 Arnold Amateur Strongman World Championships before being edged out on the last event by fellow Omsk resident Evgeny Markov.

The 23-year-old Russian doesn’t just have to worry about Rauno Heinla. Also in the contest are Rob Kearney, who finished 6th at last year’s Rogue Invitational, and Jean-François Caron, the 9-time World’s Strongest Man finalist who will be looking forward to his trip to Brazil in order to get away from the frigid Québec winter.

Caron enjoys traveling abroad for competitions: last year, he told Strongman Archives that "in the end, prize money and results are nice, but years later, the experiences are what we remember."

The Trio of Events

Força Bruta will kick off at 9 am local time with the Deadlift for reps. In a similar setup to what we’ve seen at World’s Strongest Man in past years, the athletes will lift a cage that increases in weight with each lift… except instead of barrels, people will be used as weights. Caron and Heinla, two deadlift specialists, will be looking forward to this one.

Next up will be the Keg Toss: 10 kegs ranging from 18 to 26 kg, to be thrown over a 5-metre barrier. This will be a very tough test! Only 8 kegs were used in the past two years.

And, just like in 2021, the contest will end with the Truck Pull. It should be the same setup as last year, which everyone had managed in 45 seconds or less.

A Rich History

Brazil is not known for producing the greatest strongmen in the world, but Força Bruta has proven popular enough to remain featured within the Esporte Espetacular TV show for a decade.

In 2013 and 2015, the competition was held in conjunction with the Arnold Sports Festival South America, while Strongman Champions League organized it in 2014. It then moved from Rio de Janeiro to Santos in 2017, before settling in Cotia the following year (the 2018 edition was a team contest which saw Poland’s Mateusz Kieliszkowski and Krzysztof Radzikowski beat Brazil’s Tiago Aparecido and Marcos Ferrari). Out of the first 9 editions of Força Bruta, Brian Shaw has been the most successful athlete, winning the contest 3 times in 4 appearances.

Pure relief could be seen on the face of Martins Licis after he easily threw the 420-pound Inver Stone replica over the bar at the inaugural Rogue Invitational strongman competition.

It wasn't just because Licis had earned the largest sum of money for one contest in strongman history (just over $133,000), nor was it just because he had beaten 2021 WSM champion Tom Stoltman on his best event... Martins Licis had also shown the strongman world that his 2019 World's Strongest Man title was no fluke, and that he was finally on the rise again. This was a first competition victory for Licis since the 2020 Arnold USA, nearly two years ago.

The Rogue Invitational started with the highly anticipated Elephant Bar Deadlift. Unfortunately, Brian Shaw and Mikhail Shivlyakov respectively sustained hamstring and calf injuries in this event, while previous issues prevented Jerry Pritchett, Rob Kearney and Mateusz Kieliszkowski from achieving their best lifts.

This left the door wide open for Jean-François Caron, who only gave "80% effort" to get the event win with 926 lb / 420 kg. Tom Stoltman (911 lb) and Martins Licis (906 lb).

The next event, the Cyr Dumbbell Ladder, was all about Oleksii Novikov. The Ukrainian, who lifted a 153.2 kg dumbbell in training recently, cleared the entire set of five weights while no one else got more than three. Licis finished 2nd and Stoltman 5th - the only event in which they were separated by more than one place.

The athletes opened up day two with the Wheel of Pain and, with so many athletes injured, no one managed to push it to Licis's record distance of 119'9, set in 2019. Instead, Stoltman held off Licis for the win with just over 89 feet, meaning that the gap between the leaders was down to a single point.

In the penultimate event, the athletes had to carry a 454 kg yoke for 15 metres before completing 3 reps of a 163 kg log lift. Jean-François Caron set the early pace in 54.51 seconds while Luke Stoltman surprisingly struggled, but it was Mateusz Kieliszkowski who stole the show, viper pressing the log in order to finish in just over 40 seconds. Oleksii Novikov almost beat that time, but stumbled on his last press and had to take a few seconds to recover before trying again.

Tom Stoltman delivered a clean run, finishing in 50.65 seconds to put himself into second place, but Martins Licis did more than enough to beat that time, his 43.33 giving him a two-point lead before the final event.

The five Inver Stone replicas, ranging from 125 to 191 kg, proved challenging for the first eight athletes: only Caron was able to complete the set. Tom Stoltman then went, and he made the stones look easy, stopping the clock in 29.16 seconds. This meant that Licis had to beat Caron's time of 42.45 in order to win the contest.

And it was a piece of cake for Martins. He blew Stoltman's time out of the water and, as is tradition, screamed out his own first name after finishing.

Licis, who missed the last two World's Strongest Man competitions due to a plethora of injuries, will be a major threat to Tom Stoltman and Oleksii Novikov next year. Mateusz Kieliszkowski, meanwhile, took 4th place behind Novikov at the Rogue Invitational in spite of a lat injury... 2022 should be a thrilling strongman season!

Scotland's Tom Stoltman, the current World's Strongest Man, was dominant in his quest to win the British title on Saturday evening in Sheffield. Stoltman amassed 46 out of a possible 50 points and finished in the top 3 in every event to guarantee himself the victory.

The day started with the Dumbbell Medley, a test that has caused Stoltman trouble in the past. At the WUS Strength Island competition in March, the Scotsman had failed to lift the 100 kg dumbbell but on Saturday, he powered through the 100 and 110 kg dumbbells to get off to a good start. He then put in a respectable performance in the Super Yoke and tied for the win in the Deadlift.

After that, the title was just a formality as Stoltman won the Loading Race, just over a second ahead of his brother Luke. Then, in the Atlas Stones, the Albatross made it 11 wins in his last 12 stone runs, putting his Glasgow mishap behind him.

The two previous champions, Adam Bishop (2020) and Graham Hicks (2019) were able to reach the podium. Both athletes tied Tom Stoltman with 8 reps in the Deadlift, and that proved crucial as Luke Stoltman only managed 5 reps. This gave them 5 more points than the Highland Oak in that particular event, which proved decisive as Hicks finished one point in front of the Europe's Strongest Man champion.

This was the first Scottish victory at Britain's Strongest Man since Forbes Cowan's win in 1995, and the first win for a non-English athlete since 2001 (Glenn Ross).

The athletes will start training again soon, as the next Britain's Strongest Man will be taking place in just over 4 months. However, some have other plans: Luke and Tom Stoltman will head to the Rogue Invitational next week, Shane Flowers has entered the Official Strongman Games, and Andy Black will compete at the Magnús Ver Magnússon Strongman Classic. Hibernation has not started just yet!

After narrowly edging out Mateusz Kielizkowski in Dubai two weeks ago, Oleksii Novikov lost by the finest of margins at the inaugural Arnold Sports Festival UK.

Evan Singleton and Oleksii Novikov both finished on 42 points overall, but Singleton was given the win as he was the quickest on the Atlas Stones. The American did not win an event on Sunday, but he was in the top 4 in every discipline.

Novikov, meanwhile, won three individual events as he dominated the Frame Carry, the Deadlift and the Dumbbell Press, but he fell short on the Atlas Stones. The Ukrainian could not lift the second boulder in one fluid motion, which cost him valuable time. Novikov would have needed to be 0.95 seconds faster for the competition win.

Behind the leaders, Trey Mitchell and Jean-François Caron also tied, with 36.5 points each. Mitchell was credited with 3rd place because he was 1.19 seconds faster than Caron in the Atlas Stones. Mitchell, who won the Shaw Classic in August, has had a breakthrough year in 2021, while Caron has brilliantly recovered from the injury he sustained at World's Strongest Man.

55-year-old Mark Felix finished 5th after winning his signature event, the Hercules Hold. Behind him, Scotland's Andy Black took 6th after blitzing the Atlas Stones.

Three athletes dropped out injured: Pa O'Dwyer, Luke Stoltman and Tom Stoltman. All three of them will look to heal their wounds for the next Giants Live contest, Britain's Strongest Man, which takes place on October 23.