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ARMWRESTLING
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On July 29th at Redhook's WA Strongest contest, World Champion Jacob Abbot and some of his Pacific Northwest Armwrestling team will be on hand to introduce you to the sport.
Pick up some technique tips, learn about local contests, pull against a friend for fun or even buy a table for your club.
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CONTEST REPORT 2004
Printable Version
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Washington's Strongest Man, August 21st 2004
The '2004 Washington's Strongest Man' was the first strongman contest in the Seattle area for over three years and despite the short notice for the athletes we had 13 competitors in 4 bodyweight divisions, all vying for the chance to qualify for NASS Nationals in October.
The contest was filmed by local TV station, King 5, and reporter Josephine Cheng interviewed the 'Northwest's Strongest Couple', Jesse and Callie Marunde for 'Evening Magazine'. Jesse is a two-time World's Strongest Man competitor and ranked among the top 5 of US strongmen. Callie recently won the NASS National Lightweight Strongwoman Championship for the second time. Jesse and Callie Marunde also provided the spectators with some impressive demos of strength events and athleticism both during and at the end of the contest. Their interviews are due to air sometime in November this year on King 5.
The contest started late, but once the much delayed weigh-in was completed, Jesse Marunde got us back on track, taking charge of setting up each event, briefing the athletes, scorers, timers and other judges, and making sure that each event ran quickly and smoothly.
For a small contest, the lineup was impressive, consisting of several National calibre athletes.
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The Athletes
In the Lightweight Division (under 200 lb) we had Tim Howe, the Washington State Lightweight Champion from 2001, Shane Neal, the 2002 National 175 lb champion and Scott Hughes the 175 lb runner up from the 2003 National Championships. Despite a back injury, Scott led this group in the first three events, ensuring that he would be the overall Lightweight Champion. However, this was a closely contested group, with just a few seconds or repetitions separating the athletes. In every event, these guys lifted, dragged, carried and flipped a variety of objects that outweighed them by 1, 2, 3 and even 4 times their bodyweight. The battle for second place was truly exciting with Shane's amazing Tire Flipping speed really being the deciding factor. Tim has not lifted stones for three years and yet he loaded 3 in 16.31 seconds to win the final event. If Shane and Tim get back to regular event training, next year should be even more competitive.
In the Middleweight Division (under 231 lb) we saw Highland Games athlete, Joe Maccarrone compete against Jamie Templeman from Canada and Max LeFebvre this year's 'Behemoths and Boats Champion'. Max won the Keg Carry and Sled Drag in an amazing time, with Jamie only a few seconds behind him. The placing was the same in the Log Clean and Jerk. Joe pulled 7 reps to win the Flintstone Deadlift and tie with Jamie for second place as we went into Farmers Carry and Tire Flip. Max's win by just over 4 seconds in this event was enough to ensure him 1st place overall regardless of the Atlas Stones results. The Stones are always an exciting event and Joe proved to be the best of the group, loading 3 stones in 14.28 seconds to win the event and ensure 2nd place overall.
The Middleweights also saw Mark Wechter, an IFSA lightweight professional strongman from Oregon, compete as a guest. Mark showed the crowd why he is one of the best at under 231 lbs bodyweight, deadlifting 16 reps with 500 lb and loading five of the six Atlas Stones to really get the crowd going.
In the Heavyweight Division (under 265 lb), we saw 236 lb John 'Sarge' Allen, training partner of Jesse Marunde, step up to compete against two local heavyweights, Todd Christensen and Pete Marcoff. On the day, Pete was clearly not himself and looked to have overtrained, doing poorly on some of his best events. He bravely stayed with it to finish the contest and I know he'll come back stronger next time. Todd, a local strength coach and champion powerlifter now looked to be the favorite against his lighter oppponents. However, with Sarge winning the two medleys and Todd winning the Flintstone Deadlift, their tie for first place on the Log Lift proved to be a critical point in the contest. Only 6 months prior to the contest, Sarge had suffered two broken vertebrae in a car accident. It's remarkable that he can even walk let alone compete, so it was not completely unexpected for him to get no reps on the deadlift. This meant that going into the final event, Todd and Sarge were tied. Winning the Atlas Stones, Sarge added 'Washington State's Strongest Man' to his list of titles, having also won 'Utah's Strongest Man' and placing third at 'NASS Masters Nationals' in the preceding months.
In the Super-Heavyweight Division (over 265 lb) we had two experienced athletes, Aaron Anderton and Rocco Liogghio competing alongside two rookies, Lamont Campbell and James Avalos. On almost every event Aaron and Rocco watched and matched each other. There was even some friendly taunting on the Atlas Stones as they both had a stand-off with the fifth stone. However, on the day Aaron was a rep or two better and a few seconds faster to win every event and become Washington's Strongest Man, beating Rocco, Utah's Strongest Man into second place. Lamont is young, strong, athletic and determined. Having only trained the events since July, Lamont has improved every week and is sure to do well in future contests. James was probably the bravest athlete in the contest. Not only had he never competed before, he had not tried any of the events before the day of the contest. He entered on a dare, didn't give up and didn't make any excuses.
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Conclusion
Despite the late start, the contest was over in about three and a half hours, just in time for Seattle to live up to its reputation and pour with rain. We were fortunate to not get rained out and even more so that we had no injuries, even among our rookies.
On a personal note I would like to thank Dione Wessels for making this contest a NASS National qualifier. That was the incentive I needed to put on this contest and attract local athletes to compete. I also want to thank all of the athletes, volunteers, spectators, sponsors and the City of Kirkland Parks Department. The efforts of many people made this contest possible. To all of those that helped in setting up the spectator seating, providing equipment, judging, timing, loading, scoring, commentating, organizing and even clearing up the site after the contest, I am very grateful.
Thanks to the generosity of the spectators and volunteers we also raised some money for the 'Starlight Children's Foundation'.
Planning for next year has already begun and with feedback from the athletes, spectators and volunteers, I hope to have a bigger and better contest next year. Thank you all so much.
Steve Spellman
Promoter
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