Records, Vitriol and Hafthor Bjornsson’s Quest for the 501 Kilo Deadlift
I’ve been in isolation ever since I returned on March 9th from directing the 2020 Arnold Strongman Classic (ASC). Like other fans of Strongman, I’ve watched with sadness as show after Strongman show got canceled last month as the coronavirus spread around the globe. In recent weeks, I’ve been listening with yet more dismay to the vitriolic barbs Eddie Hall has been hurling at Hafthor Bjornsson as the big Icelander gets ready to attempt to set a new all-time Strongman deadlift record on Saturday, May 2nd from his gym in Iceland. If I didn’t know all the principals, I might...
Barbells & Bios: The Sportswoman Magazine
Published for several decades, beginning in the 1920s, The Sportswoman marks one of the earlier, and indeed, most fascinating insights into female sport in America in the first half of the twentieth century. Part of the Stark’s Anna Hiss Collection, the magazine covered a range of women’s sports including, but not limited to field hockey, lacrosse, badminton and horseback riding among other pursuits. The Center’s earliest edition, coming in May 1928, details hockey, badminton, tennis alongside articles on Greco-Roman ideals, the ‘Sportswoman’s creed’ and miscellaneous observations on women’s sports. In recent decades, a great deal of historical interest has been directed towards...
Barbells and the Brooklyn Strong Boy
Warren Lincoln Travis began his strongman career as the “Brooklyn Strong Boy,” but quickly graduated to circuses and vaudeville and also worked long stints at Coney Island. Travis was America’s most famous strongman in the early years of the twentieth century. Most other touring professionals of the era were Europeans or Canadians – Sandow, the Saxon Trio, Apollon, Louis Cyr, and Horace Barre. To distinguish himself from these other contemporaries, Travis’ performances were marked by the lifting of monstrous amounts of weight in back lifts, in hip and harness lifts, and in the crowd-pleasing one-finger lift (a note from Stark...
Barbells & Bios: Giovanni Belzoni, Strong Man Egyptologist
Published by Colin Clair in 1957, Giovanni Belzoni – Strong Man Egyptologist is a dramatized account of one of the nineteenth century’s most fascinating characters. An early strongman by trade who travelled around Britain and Ireland, Belzoni made his fame as exploring Egypt and reporting back to the British press. Based primarily on Belzoni’s own travels accounts, produced in the 1820s, Clair’s short monograph attempts to recreate, oftentimes with a fine sense of exaggeration, the danger, mystique and adventure which dominated Belzoni’s life. At first glance, this small monograph appears an odd creation. Few individuals have heard of Belzoni and dramatizations of...
Sig Klein in Formal Clothing
Sigmund Klein was one of the most fascinating, and indeed, successful physical culturists of the 1920s and 1930s. Operating a gym in New York, the same gym run by his father in law, Professor Atilla, Klein’s unique position in the fitness industry made him the envy of many. Not only was he incredibly strong and athletic, but he was part of physical culture royalty. Given the fact that he ran a gymnasium and was a weight trainer in his own right, many of the images we have of Sig tend to be him in workout clothes. This is what makes...
Lessons from The Arnold Strongman Classic
On Monday, March 2, 2020, I met my graduate course, The History of the Sport Industry in America, at the Stark Center to talk about a series of readings they’d been assigned that dealt with the business of strength. They were asked to read an article Ben Pollack and I wrote about 1950s gym-chain magnate Vic Tanny, several chapters from Dominic Morais’ dissertation about Bob Hoffman’s marketing tactics to promote the York Barbell Company and, finally, a long essay that Terry wrote about The Arnold Strongman Classic (ASC) in an anthology called Philosophical Considerations of Physical Strength that he also...
Lock of Hair from The Mighty Atom
In June 1911, shortly after Joe Greenstein arrived in Houston, Texas, he resumed a wrestling career that had been interrupted in his native Poland when rising anti-Semitism drove him to join relatives in America. In 1914, however, a friend shot him between the eyes and set him on a different path. As the story goes, the bullet flattened against his forehead, sparing his life and sparking a lifelong interest in the connection between mental power and strength. As The Mighty Atom, he performed standard strongman feats of strength, but his signature stunts usually involved his hair, with which he pulled...
Barbells & Bios: Harvey Penick’s Little Red Book
As an avid, but unsuccessful golfer, I have a deep appreciation for those skilled in the sport. In a career spanning several decades, Penick was involved with the game at every level. From 1913 to 1923 he caddied at the Austin Country Club. In 1923 he became the head professional right out of high school. He remained the pro until retiring in 1971, when his son, Tinsley, took over the position. From 1971 to 1995, Harvey continued as golf pro emeritus, coaching Ben Crenshaw, Betty Jameson, Tom Kite, Sandra Palmer, Betsy Rawls, Kathy Whitworth and Mickey Wright among others. Recently, and...
