Anyone have updates?
Whatever happened to Derek Poundstone?
[quote]Staraj wrote:
Whatever happened to Derek Poundstone?[/quote]
Pretty sure he’s on an indefinite hiatus for a myriad of reasons. One being the plethora of injuries he’s had/having to overcome, and the other being tied down due to recent affairs with his family. He has a baby due by the end of the year.
Looks like Zydrunas won for the 4th time. Hafthor in second, and Brian Shaw with 3rd.
By the points, it looks like the top three were in an entire different league lol. The 4th place had like 25 points less than 3rd.
It kinda sucked how it ended with Thor coming in 2nd. Not taking anything away from the legend himself “Big Z” but damn, Thor coming 7th equal in the squat blew him up with the points. He came 1st, 2nd, 1st, 2nd, 7th, 1st… & he still only lost by .5 points… he was miles ahead.
The next coming years we’re going to enter the “Thor” era. He’s only 25 too. Young as fuck.
[quote]mattypyuu wrote:
It kinda sucked how it ended with Thor coming in 2nd. Not taking anything away from the legend himself “Big Z” but damn, Thor coming 7th equal in the squat blew him up with the points. He came 1st, 2nd, 1st, 2nd, 7th, 1st… & he still only lost by .5 points… he was miles ahead.
The next coming years we’re going to enter the “Thor” era. He’s only 25 too. Young as fuck.[/quote]
I want to see Zydrunas solidify a 5th win just to shut up all the Mariusz D-riders. Not that I don’t love Mariusz, there’s just too much hype over him and people don’t acknowledge the IFSA split in the mid 2000’s.
It may have been close but so have a lot on contests in the past. Zydrunas is without a doubt the strongest man of all time, him winning wsm 4 times, winning the arnold 7 times, the ifsa championships twice, europes strongest man 3 times and the world log lift championships 4 times, cements that. His list of other titles are too long to mention, plus the fact he has done all that after tearing both patella tendons badly in 2001 makes it all the more impressive.
Yeah of course, Big Z is defiantly 1 of greatest of all time. His resume is impressive right now. He’s also turning 40 next year. You think he’ll retire on his 5th if he gets it? It’ll be a good 40th year birthday present lol
It’s gonna be hard to see him surpass Thor next year though… with being only 25 years old, he’s managed to have 3 podium finishes at WSM. I can’t wait to see this giant dominate. He will heavily have potential to beat Big Z and Mariusz at title wins.
If Z had been .5 seconds slower on the last atlas stone he would have taken third in that event behind Shaw and Thor would have gotten first overall. I wish Thor had won this year honestly, he did such an awesome job. I knew he would lose to like a million dudes on the squat lift though unfortunately. If it’d been pretty much any other event he would have had it.
Thanks for the updates. It’s always sort of frustrating that in the internet age there is so little information on WSM until a while after the event.
On Halfthor, I definitely think he has more to come. However, you have to be strong at everything if you want to be the champion. Big Z and Shaw were in the top 4 on every event. In that kind of field, a tie for seventh place is going to hurt and it should.
It’s interesting to see Big Z beat Shaw in the stones. That is where Shaw has traditionally beat Z.
Also, what is up with Mike Burke’s score of ‘tower fell’ in the stones? I take it that means that the platform he was loading onto fell over. Does that really mean he just gets a 0? I suppose he didn’t have a shot at the podium and since Terry didn’t overtake him for 4th it ended up not mattering.
[quote]Silyak wrote:
It’s interesting to see Big Z beat Shaw in the stones. That is where Shaw has traditionally beat Z.
[/quote]
Saw a bootleg video of this. Shaw bobbled one of his stones and had to go back and fix it. If not for that he would have beaten Z by probably a couple seconds and Thor would have won overall. Such a tight contest this year it’s unreal.
You’re right though; Zydrunas has always shown that he has no real weaknesses, and that’s what it takes if you want to ensure victory.
I was wondering wtf happened to Mike Burke as well. He was only like a point behind Shaw in 4th place earlier on. It was initially a super tight race between the four of them, but he had kind of a total meltdown it seems.
Big Z, Thor & Brian; in a league of their own.
Z just proves that you don’t need to be freakishly tall to be the best; 4x WSM titles.
Big Z is 6’3." He just doesn’t look that tall because he’s pushing 400lbs. That puts him about two standard deviations above the mean. It probably isn’t what I would consider freakish, but he definitely isn’t representing short people.
Vytautas Lalas is representing short people. He has even said as much. He said something like “I want to show people that you don’t have to be tall to win at strongman!”
No, no you just have to be a solid 320lbs at like 5’9" lol…
Speaking of which, what happened to Lalas this year?
[quote]csulli wrote:
[quote]Silyak wrote:
It’s interesting to see Big Z beat Shaw in the stones. That is where Shaw has traditionally beat Z.
[/quote]
Saw a bootleg video of this. Shaw bobbled one of his stones and had to go back and fix it. If not for that he would have beaten Z by probably a couple seconds and Thor would have won overall. Such a tight contest this year it’s unreal.
You’re right though; Zydrunas has always shown that he has no real weaknesses, and that’s what it takes if you want to ensure victory.
I was wondering wtf happened to Mike Burke as well. He was only like a point behind Shaw in 4th place earlier on. It was initially a super tight race between the four of them, but he had kind of a total meltdown it seems.[/quote]
To be fair though, Zydrunas bobbled the first stone last year and would’ve otherwise beaten Shaw, so it cuts both ways. I’d bet every year, every competitor has at least one event where the difference between points was fractions of a second, or inches away from lockout. It’s the nature of competition.
And as far as people saying that it would’ve made a difference to placings (thor winning) nobody points out that Zydrunas hit the wall on the keg toss not once but twice, and would’ve otherwise had a point and a half lead going into the stones
Regarding Burke, I wouldnt say he had a meltdown, he was carrying a hamstring injury from the arnold, so he only picked up four points on the squat. Then their crappy equipment fell when he loaded the first stone and since he didn’t, I don’t know, pick the tower back up and load it again, they gave him a zero. Ridiculous. So he took fourth place while practically skipping two events.
Lalas also had an injury that was bothering him leading up to the arnold, and was aggravated there