The rogue invitational last year, you would’ve thought no one was gonna be Tom on stones, then Martins came in and fucking wrecked the stones. Smashed Tom’s time by about 10 seconds
Standing after day 2
| Group 1 | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tom Stoltman — United Kingdom | 24 |
| 2 | Kevin Faires — USA | 18 |
| 3 | Gabriel Rheaume — Canada | 16 |
| 4 | Aivars Smaukstelis — Latvia | 13 |
| 5 | Andy Black — United Kingdom | 7 |
| 6 | Manuel Angulo — Chile | 3 |
| Group 2 | ||
| 1 | Mitchell Hooper — Canada | 22.5 |
| 2 | Bobby Thompson — USA | 17 |
| 3 | Brian Shaw — USA | 13.5 |
| 4 | Gabriel Peña — Mexico | 11 |
| 5 | Konstantine Janashia — Georgia | 10 |
| 6 | Mark Felix — United Kingdom | 9 |
| Group 3 | ||
| 1 | Oleksii Novikov — Ukraine | 21.5 |
| 2 | Adam Bishop — United Kingdom | 16 |
| 3 | Trey Mitchell — USA | 15.5 |
| 4 | Rob Kearney — USA | 14 |
| 5 | Grzegorz Szymanski — Poland | 9 |
| 6 | Mika Törrö — Finland | 8 |
| Group 4 | ||
| 1 | Martins Licis — USA | 21.5 |
| 2 | Maxime Boudreault — Canada | 17 |
| 3 | Pavlo Kordiyaka — Ukraine | 16.5 |
| 4 | Gavin Bilton — United Kingdom | 15 |
| 5 | Nedžmin Ambešković — Bosnia and Herzegovina | 6 |
| 6 | Shane Flowers (withdrawn) | 6 |
| Group 5 | ||
| 1 | Luke Stoltman — United Kingdom | 23 |
| 2 | Eythor Ingolfsson Melsted — Iceland | 16 |
| 3 | Jean-Stephen Coraboeuf — France | 15 |
| 4 | Kelvin De Ruiter — Netherlands | 10.5 |
| 5 | Evan Singleton — USA | 9.5 |
| 6 | Kim Ujarak Lorentzen — Greenland | 9 |
The winners in every group just needing to touch the wrecking ball tomorrow and they qualifty. Groups 3 and 4 are the tightest in terms of second and third place. Will be interesting to see who is in the stone offs.
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He has 3000 followers…
Everyone go subscribe.
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DONE - if this dude pushes for a podium I’ll be SO happy.
Man, I couldn’t disagree more. This year has an OUTSTANDING line up. The best in years. You have Licis, Novikov, and the Stoltman brothers in the finals. All of them are fantastic to watch, and unbelievably well rounded. 3 of them have a WSM title under their belts already. Shaw looks like he’ll also make the finals, he just needs to do well enough on the grip event this morning to get to the stone off, where I think he should dismantling his opponent. And this Mitchell Hooper guy is exciting as hell! It’s a really deep field this year, I think those 6 guys all have a legit shot at a win, with Shaw being the least likely. Which is crazy, given how many people were thinking this could be his year over the last month or so.
I was definitely going to bring this up. Martis is insanely good at stones too, and he’s generally faster on stone runs. Tom’s ability with a max stone doesn’t translate that well to WSM stones, because none of them are heavy enough. If you finished with like a 500 lbs stone, Tom would likely have a big advantage, but that’s just not the case.
Side note: I reallllllly wanna see Trey Mitchell beat Kearney or Bishop in the grip event. As long as he places within 1 spot of Kearney, he makes it to the stone off, where he should dominate, and land in the finals. I fucking love Kearney, but at the end of the day, I gotta pick the Texas boy over him.
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I think some people have seen these legendary athletes and it’s hard to compete with that. I feel that way about the current UFC. I am sure there is a lot of talent, but when they lost a lot of their long time legends like GSP, Anderson Silva, BJ Penn, even someone like Jon Jones who wasn’t maybe a legend but exciting and around the tail end of those other guys, I just lost interest.
Shaw, Big Z, and even Thor (being like Jon Jones, maybe not legendary, but huge, and exciting) being gone it is all newer guys. These new guys might be better than the ones I mentioned, but I get more excited seeing guys I know a lot about.
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I see what you are saying. But Tom still has the WR for the WSM run. All 5 in 19 seconds. Shaw (a great stone lifter) did it in 28 seconds the same year. I’ve had a look. When Licis won it back in 2019 he did all 5 in 27 seconds. But saying that - he did not need the win. And that was 3 years back. And I’e not seen him competing.
Any way - I think Stoltman will still be thinking that is his event. But he still needs to turn out a performance.
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Totally get that. Licis is the only one in the group (aside from Shaw of course), who has a real extensive track record of wins. And he’s got a ton of personality. I think what we’re going to have in just a few years is all of these guys competing with each other and racking up wins, and all of a sudden, they’ll all be hitting that legendary status. It’s very likely that SOMEONE will wind up with their second WSM victory this year, and that’s a hell of an accomplishment.
I don’t think we’ll see another Hafthor anytime soon, as he is such an anomaly in the sport. But I think the guys I mentioned do have a path to being mentioned in the same breath as Shaw and Big Z, with long, impressive resumes at the end of their careers.
On a separate note, it’s kind of funny that Eddie Hall did so little in his career, and has so many fan boys. I can make the argument that Tom Stoltman has already had a more impressive career. They each have a WSM win, neither have an Arnold win. Eddie doesn’t have the deadlift world record anymore, whereas Tom is still the stone king.
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Licis is a national treasure IMO. He is who I root for out of the current guys.
I would have really like to see Mateusz Kieliszkowski come back to WSM though.
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Pending stone results, it looks like I nailed my guesses on ALL the finalists! And I think most of the stone offs will have predictable results. This is gonna be a hell of a final!
The fact that WSM is a show first and a sport second doesn’t really explain most of the corruption. You don’t have to manufacture a champion to have a good TV show. Every WSM champion has garnished quite a bit of respect and admiration, even though many are not without controversy. It’s clear that the organizers are more interested in control than having a good show or even optimizing the amount of money that could be made. And that is where I am most disappointed. If they were just greedy, I don’t think people would care as much. Put on a good show with good sponsors and competitors and I think you should be able to make a lot of money. But it seems they are more interested in controlling access than in just growing the sport and making money.
And while it’s true that it’s often hard to predict groups, Luke Stoltman is dominating a group that is by far the easiest group. Look at the deadlift result. He won his group with a score that would have been outside the top three in all but one other group. It would have been 6th in group 3. And that isn’t because someone else in the group is greatly underperforming or injured. It’s just a shallow group.
But it certainly helps!
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I think this is mostly due to the WSM TV show and its popularity in the UK, and the fact that the UK hadn’t had a winner in years.
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I would say Novikov has a good chance of winning his 2nd. The only disadvantage he has is being lighter and shorter than your average strongman competitor, so he’d be at a big disadvantage in events like the bus pull.
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I’m wondering how much more prepared he could have been if it weren’t for the war.
I really want to see him win just because of the underdog story, though I think Martins and Tom have a slight edge on him
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Agree with this Tom is my first pick and then Licis.
We’re on the same page here. I’m predicting a VERY close finish between these three at the top. But man. Mitchell Hooper is on fire, I still don’t really know what to make of him. The fact that he thought the car walk was going to be a weak event for him, and then he blazed through it, should terrify the field.
Boyd got fired by WUS.
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regarding Hooper: He’s literally never done some of the events in the final…
Not that he didn’t train it for the show, he’s never actually done the event.
With what he’s done so far, I won’t be surprised if he manages to end up anywhere between first and last in the final.
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If you’re strong you don’t need to practice.
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