Testing the limits
How do you decide you are quite good at pulling trucks? We speak to the Cyprus entrant in last week’s competition about his life as a strongman
The Olympic motto of “faster, higher, stronger” has been the aspiration for many athletes.
Generations of spectators have been captivated by their sporting heroes pushing the boundaries with seemingly superhuman displays. It was no different in Limassol last Sunday for round two of the United Strongman Series.
It’s every boy’s dream to have the strength of Superman and, at the competition, it seemed as though the competitors actually did, as the hulking figures took on six events requiring explosive power, endurance and mental strength.
Cyprus was represented for the first time in an international strongman competition, with Clint Darden. “My body hurts from the hair down,” the 28-year-old said on Monday. “The whole body is stiff and it feels OK only when I breathe.”
Darden, originally from Kentucky, USA, finished ninth out of ten competitors but was still pleased with his effort.
“One of my goals before the event was just to beat one of the other athletes as it was an elite field made up of the world’s top strongmen. They are my idols and I have looked up to them for the past few years and know everything about them. It was a great privilege to be competing in the same competition as them and to actually beat some of them in certain events was amazing. I set personal records in nearly every event so it was a pretty good success considering.”
Darden described how he pulled a 15-tonne truck uphill for 25 metres in 55 seconds. “The truck pull was the first and hardest event and made the rest of the day very difficult. I needed to lie down in the shade afterwards and thought I was going to die for the next ten minutes.”
He also said that, after five years of competing in strongman competitions around the world, last Sunday’s event had the most meaning for him. “I was representing Cyprus, my wife and her family and our friends. It was such a great feeling to hear people cheering me on, telling me they were proud of me.”
Darden, the smallest man in the field at 125 kilos and 188 cm in height, explained that he had trained for eight to ten weeks for the event. Training mainly involved gym work, running and swimming, while Darden and his training partner would recreate the events that they would face every Sunday.
When asked to describe his diet prior to competition, Darden said he was, “on a seafood diet: I see food and I eat it.” Joking aside, he would consume one-and-a-half-kilos of meat every day, two to three pints of milk daily and five kilos of rice weekly. Every Friday, he would pig out at TGI Friday’s with his Cypriot wife. “She is only five foot-one, so we balance each other out nicely.”
So how do you realise you have such great strength? “Between the ages of 8 and 16, I would take part in martial arts competitions and was ranked second in the United States in my age category,” he said. “I did pretty well and by the age of 16, I weighed 70 kilos and started to lift weights. I was 22-years-old when I entered my first strongman competition and haven’t looked back since.”
He once pulled a 35-tonne fire truck over a distance of 15 metres while his best dead lift is 345 kilos.
However, being a man of steel does also have its disadvantages. “It’s almost impossible to find clothes here in Cyprus. I’m used to wearing baggy clothing but the XXL size here is much smaller than the American equivalent,” he said.
“Fitting into cars here is also more difficult, while being on an aeroplane is always an interesting adventure.”
When people find out what Darden does for a living they always seem to have the same preconceptions. “For some reason, I’m always asked whether I pull trucks with my teeth. I don’t know where people get these ideas from and it’s something that I’ve never done.”
He described himself as laid back and calm and a person that rarely gets upset. “Many strongmen are gentle giants who are always smiling and laughing and it’s a great community to be in.
“I’m really not sure what profession I’d be in if I wasn’t a strongman, but it would have to be something where I’d push myself.”
For more information: www.cystrongman.com
