The World's Strongest Man is an international strongman competition held every year. Organized by American event management company IMG, a subsidiary of Endeavor, it is broadcast in the US during summers and in the UK around the end of December each year. Competitors qualify based on placing in the top three at the four to eight Giants Live events each year. The current event sponsor is SBD Apparel. Previous sponsors include Tachi Palace, Coregenx, Commerce Hotel and Casino, DAF Trucks, Tonka, MET-Rx, and PartyPoker.com.
The Strongman Super Series, known from 2001 to 2004 as the IFSA World Strongman Super Series, from 2005 to 2008 as the World's Strongest Man Super Series, and reverting in 2009 to the World Strongman Super Series, is a sequence of grand prix events in the sport of strength athletics. It was introduced in 2001 in response to concerns that, unlike other individual sports such as golf or tennis, there was no recognized international "tour" in strength athletics. The Strongman Super Series ensures that there are a number of high-profile, professionally run contests during the year, with competitors' placings being used to decide the overall Super Series Champion.
IronMind Enterprises, Inc. is an American niche market business based in Nevada City, California, that specializes in "tools of the trade for serious strength athletes." Though many of its products include strength-training equipment and accessories, IronMind also publishes books, DVDs and the quarterly magazine MILO: A Journal For Serious Strength Athletes.
Žydrūnas Savickas is a Lithuanian retired strongman and powerlifter. Due to his 84 international wins in strongman including four World's Strongest Man titles, eight Arnold Strongman Classic titles, two IFSA Strongman World Championships, and over 70 world records, he is widely regarded as the greatest strongman of all time.
Magnus Samuelsson, is a Swedish actor, former Strongman and the 1998 World's Strongest Man. Known as the 'king of the stones', he made it to the World's Strongest Man podium 5 times and the finals 10 times and is regarded as one of the greatest strongmen in history.
Britain's Strongest Man is an annual strongman event held in the United Kingdom. Competitors qualify for the final through regional heats and the winner is awarded the title of "Britain's Strongest Man". The competition is produced by TWI and serves as a qualifying event for the World's Strongest Man ("WSM") competition, also a TWI production.
Andrus Murumets is an Estonian strongman and entrant to the World's Strongest Man contest. He reached 5th in the World Rankings according to the IFSA rankings in 2008.
Mark Felix is a Grenadian-English strongman competitor and regular entrant to the World's Strongest Man competition. He has competed at a record 18 World's Strongest Man contests, reaching the finals three times. He is the winner of the 2015 Ultimate Strongman Masters World Championships, 2016 WSF World Cup India and has won several international grip contests, including the Rolling Thunder World Championships in 2008 and 2009, as well as the Vice Grip Viking Challenge in 2011 and 2012.
The Strongman Champions League is a Strongman competition circuit, with several Grand Prix events throughout the year and the Strongman Champions League overall champion title going to the overall winner at the end of the season. Competitors include legends in the sport, including Žydrūnas Savickas, Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, Aivars Šmaukstelis, Krzysztof Radzikowski, Ervin Katona, Dainis Zageris, Mateusz Kieliszkowski, Oleksii Novikov, Mikhail Koklyaev, Matjaz Belsak, J.F. Caron, Vytautas Lalas, Kelvin de Ruiter, Laurence Shahlaei, Travis Ortmayer, Andrus Murumets, Pavlo Kordiyaka, Tom Stoltman, Rauno Heinla, Terry Hollands, Eddie Hall, Nick Best, Dennis Kohlruss and Martin Wildauer.
The World Strongman Cup Federation ("WSCF") was a worldwide organisation within strength athletics that claimed to be the sport's organising body with the aim of making "the Strongman Sport more popular and accessible for a wide range of the people." Its motto was "be strong". It was also a charity. The Federation organised the World Strongman Cup one of the main competitions in the field of strength athletics boasting participation from some of the foremost strongmen around the globe. It was a separate competition from the World's Strongest Man, the Strongman Super Series and the IFSA World Championship). It has since been replaced by the World Strongman Federation's World Cup.
The Fortissimus is a defunct event in strength athletics. The name means "the mightiest" and was a multi-event challenge at the end of which the winner is crowned as the "Strongest Man on Earth". It was set up to bring together the strongest competitors on the planet independent of the organisations to which they were signed, and also as a tribute to the nineteenth-century Canadian strongman Louis Cyr, which gave it many similarities to Le Defi Mark Ten International which last took place in Canada in the early 1990s. After its first airing in 2008, the strength athletics magazine Milo described it as the ultimate strongman competition ever held. Despite a successful edition in 2009, a reported lack of a major sponsor for 2010 resulted in the competition being suspended, no future contests have been announced.
Giants Live was created in 2009 as the official Tour that qualifies strongmen to compete in the annual World's Strongest Man contest. At each Grand Prix, up to twelve international strongmen come together and compete over six events. The top three at each contest will receive an invitation to compete at the World's Strongest Man contest for that same year.
The World Muscle Power Classic (WMPC) was one of the most enduring annual strongman competitions, running for twenty years and in that time attaining the position of the second most prestigious strongman contest in the world, after the World's Strongest Man.
The World's Strongest Man 2009 was the 32nd edition of World's Strongest Man and took place in Valletta, Malta from 26 September to 3 October 2009. It was sponsored by PartyPoker.com. It was anticipated by the strength athletics world as promising to be "the best one yet." The anticipation was based on the organisers ensuring invites were made to "every top athlete in the world" regardless of their affiliation to any particular strength athletics body. In previous years, the schism between the International Federation of Strength Athletes and the organisers of WSM had meant that certain athletes were forbidden to compete, undermining the credentials of the competition.
Darren Sadler is a British former strongman competitor, winner of the World Strongman Challenge in the under 105 kg category, and notable for being a repeat competitor at the World's Strongest Man despite his comparatively small stature. He is also the co-founder of the Giant's Live Tour together with Colin Bryce.
Strength athletics in Finland refers to the participation of Finnish competitors and holding national strongman competitions.
Strength athletics in Iceland refers to the participation of Icelandic competitors and holding national strongman competitions. The sport's roots have a long and ancient history going back many centuries with the legends of Orm Storolfsson and Grettir Ásmundarson to the 19th century traditional strongmen including Snorri Björnsson, Brynjólfur Eggertsson and Gunnar Salómonsson; before the televisation of modern strongman competitions in the late 1970s.
Mark Westaby is a British strongman competitor, notable for being a repeat competitor at the World's Strongest Man.
The "World Strongman" International Union of associations and clubs ("WSM") is a worldwide organization within strength athletics, founded by Vlad Redkin, a prominent figure in the history of the International Federation of Strength Athletes and World Strongman Cup Federation. The WSF has organised a number of grand prix events and national championships featuring some of the world's leading strength athletes including 5 time World's Strongest Man winner Mariusz Pudzianowski, Brian Shaw, Mikhail Koklyaev, Krzysztof Radzikowski, Tarmo Mitt, Kevin Nee, Stefan Solvi Petursson, Laurence Shahlaei and Mark Felix. The WSF's flagship programme is the WSF World Cup.
The World Log Lift Championships is an annual competition featuring strength athletes from all over the world, competing exclusively in the log clean and press. Created initially as part of the Strongman Champions League, it has since been part of Giants Live and the championship has been present in both series, Giants Live running one version of the championship and the World Log Lift Federation taking over the Strongman Champions League's variant of the championship.
