Only one point to me posting this story, not how you start, it’s how you finish that matters.
From Marty Gallagher’s Purposeful Primitive:
"He (Kirk Karwoski) got a great job as a Union Pressman and settled in. He bought a small condo and worked his union job. He’d get off at 4 everyday and stayed in this groove for the next decade. Kirk wanted to lift in the Big Leagues, the USPF/IPF.
I told him his squat depth wasn’t near low enough. He held all kinds of records in the fledgling ADFPA, but in the USPF squats had to be unquestionably below parallel. Plus the level of competition in the 242 pound class was stratospheric:
Thor Kritsky had played football at Virginia Tech with Bruce Smith; Dave Jacoby was the dominant 242er in the World; Willie Bell was a stud with an 800-plus deadlift; and Joe Ladiner was positively frightening . . . the 242 pound class was a meat grinder.
Still, he was the hottest young propsect on the scene. So we went to our first USPF nationals. He promptly bombed out: three straight squats, nine red lights, and bam! He was gone! The next year the same thing: another bomb out! The following year we yet tried again. He was insistent about starting with 804 in the squat, a Junior World Record.
I tried to talk him into starting lower, but he would hear none of it. His first attempt squat was turned down 2 to 1. Still, he had gotten one white light. His second attempt was turned down 2 to 1.
He flipped out and threatened mayhem. He told me point blank that if he missed his third squat and suffered the embarrassment of bombing out in his third straight National Championships he would quit powerlifting forever. He was super serious and I believed him.
As we stood on the chalk box prior to the do-or-die attempt, he chalked his hands. I chalked his back to keep the bar from slipping and happened to notice Ed Coan and Doug Furnas sitting in the front row. All of a sudden they started laughing about something totally unrelated, I quickly jabbed Kirk, hard in the ribs and said, “LOOK! Look at Furnas and Coan–they’re LAUGHING AT YOU!”
He looked over at his idols and instantly morphed into a demon. He finished chalking his hands and cotinued to glare at the dynamic duo of Doug and Ed. As they finished laughing at their private joke, they coincidentally happened to look at Kirk and I at the chalk box, their smiles still lingered on their faces, their shared joke must have been a funny one.
The look on Kirk’s face went from nervous, disjointed and apprehensive to a look of pure evil. Hatred cubed. “I’LL TEACH THOSE SON-OF-A-BITCHES NOT TO LAUGH AT ME!!!” he yelled. With that he stormed to the platform in front of a packed house and attacked the 804 like a maniac.
It would be nice to say he slaughtered the poundage and made it look easy . . . but I can’t . . . it was absolutely agonizing. Kirk did something he had never done before; he took the barbell all the way down to parallel, his usual turnaround point . . .
Then he took the poundage down another 3-4 inches–way below parallel–before he began an ascent that was so slow, so horrific, so excruciating, so intense and torturous that the jaded, seen-it-all Mike Lambert, powerlifting’s major domo and guru, later called this particular attempt, “The single most difficult lift I have ever witnessed in my entire life.”
Finished, Karwoski collapsed coming off the platform. The judge’s lights came on . . . on white . . . one red . . . ("OH SHIT! I heard him moan) then . . . a second white light! Pandemonium ensued!
The auditorium went nuts! He had set a Junior World Record, stayed in the competition, polaced third at the end of the day and went on to become one of the greatest powerlifters in history. We came within one red light of having him quit the sport altogether.
Later on Ed came up and asked, “What the hell was going on with The Kid on that last attempt? He looked insane!” I shook my head and said, “I owe it all to you and Doug.” Ed looked baffled. “Call it elemental (elementary???) child psychology.” I said. The boy became a man that day" (88-89).
I think I did a faithful typing job.
Captain Kirk at his best:
Wishing you all the best in your future meets.
