Arnold Classic

[mouse]

Yooooo Chloe Brennan bare handing the dinnie stones might be the best feat of the whole weekend...

Legit came out of my chair a bit and had to explain to my oldest how she's one of I believe 4 or 5 in history that have done it and I'm pretttty sure only the second one to do it bare handed...

[mouse]

And to the surprise of no one, Martins comes out on top...

Bobby Thompson did HELLA good for having like one weeks notice that he was competing...

[Cleverusername]

Yooooo Chloe Brennan bare handing the dinnie stones might be the best feat of the whole weekend...

Legit came out of my chair a bit and had to explain to my oldest how she's one of I believe 4 or 5 in history that have done it and I'm pretttty sure only the second one to do it bare handed...

That was awesome.

[Hardartery]

Yooooo Chloe Brennan bare handing the dinnie stones might be the best feat of the whole weekend...

Legit came out of my chair a bit and had to explain to my oldest how she's one of I believe 4 or 5 in history that have done it and I'm pretttty sure only the second one to do it bare handed...

The lift of the day, for sure. That was just nuts.

[mouse]

Yooooo Chloe Brennan bare handing the dinnie stones might be the best feat of the whole weekend...

Legit came out of my chair a bit and had to explain to my oldest how she's one of I believe 4 or 5 in history that have done it and I'm pretttty sure only the second one to do it bare handed...

The lift of the day, for sure. That was just nuts.

And I forgot she's been competing all weekend...

She basically ran over from the end of her round to do that I heard...

[Hardartery]

Yooooo Chloe Brennan bare handing the dinnie stones might be the best feat of the whole weekend...

Legit came out of my chair a bit and had to explain to my oldest how she's one of I believe 4 or 5 in history that have done it and I'm pretttty sure only the second one to do it bare handed...

The lift of the day, for sure. That was just nuts.

And I forgot she's been competing all weekend...

She basically ran over from the end of her round to do that I heard...

Just nuts.

[MarkKO]

Poor JF...

So unless I'm way behind everyone else, it seems like JF tore two tendons which have now been reattached.

[TimK]

Chloe lifting the stones was awesome, couldn't believe what I was seeing after the 6'4" 320lb woman before her wasn't able to do it.

I actually got seated tickets for day two of the strongman classic... it was good in that it allowed us to go back and forth to the USAPL Grand Prix between events and still get back in (a couple of times they said general admission was at capacity and made us show our tickets) and not lose our seats. Also, our seats were theoretically close enough to get a much better view of things vs up in the bleachers like day 1. We were in the seventh row from the front. However, what I didn't realize when buying the tickets is that with the seating being flat and the stage not being raised at all, it was a struggle to see glimpses of anything between the heads of the people in front of us and we ended up watching a lot of the action on the big screens in hanging above the arena. So that kinda sucked. Meanwhile there was stadium seating on the left and right sides of the stage, which wasn't apparent when buying the tickets but would have given a much better view overall even without being "in front" of the stage. I don't think the front section makes any sense unless you're going to be in the first two rows or MAYBE the third.

On the other hand we watched most of the pro women's events and a decent amount of the amateur events as well... that was awesome because there was no ticketed seating and hardly anyone was there so we were able to sit right in the first or second row and see them up close.

Novikov's stone-to-shoulder event was like something out of a movie, he was down to 30 seconds and Arnold started cheering him on in the microphone - "Novikov can do it! Come on Oleksii!" - and then he got the rep at the last second with everyone screaming and clapping. I rewatched some of the events on the recorded livestream on rogue's channel when I got home also, and I could barely make out Arnold in the background, only because I was listening for it. The crowd involvement really doesn't translate very well, I feel like they could mix the audio differently to convey the excitement more because it was 100x more electrifying in person than how it seemed on the recording. At least turn up the mic when Arnold is cheering on the competitors for fuck's sake.

I totally missed Caron's injury because we actually sat in the wrong section and right when he was going up to lift the people whose seats we were in showed up and we had to move. In fact we missed the whole first part of the log press event because the damn schedule on the Arnold website said it was starting at 2:00 and I guess it actually started at 1:30. There were lots of schedule inconsistencies like that over the weekend.

Right after Caron went down Magnus was on the mic saying something along the lines of "I've seen a lot of injuries in strong man, a lot of terrible stuff, I've even seen a man die"... thanks for the pep talk dude!

On Sunday I was watching the middleweight women compete and one of them had an atlas stone roll backward over her face while trying to get it over the bar... that was brutal but she managed to get up and walked away from it.

[sklunk]

The scheduling errors were really annoying. I also wasted money on a parking pass for Sunday because they neglected to mention that 10 square blocks around the garage were closed for a race…

[mouse]

Poor JF...

So unless I'm way behind everyone else, it seems like JF tore two tendons which have now been reattached.

Yup I believe it was his quad(s)... I saw he posted some stuff and I haven't heard any confirmation of the fracture rumors so hopefully he will be able to bounce back. Maxime and crew are organizing an online contest/benefit with Anthony Fuhrman/Shaw/etc I saw to raise some cash...

Chloe lifting the stones was awesome, couldn't believe what I was seeing after the 6'4" 320lb woman before her wasn't able to do it.

So I have a little thought on that... and this is not to go down the technique/strength rabbit hole, but I did not at all like how the woman just before her attempted it. Chloe has a much more 'conventional' set up and stance for those stones...

On the other hand we watched most of the pro women's events and a decent amount of the amateur events as well... that was awesome because there was no ticketed seating and hardly anyone was there so we were able to sit right in the first or second row and see them up close.

From what I heard that was the better show anyway...

Novikov's stone-to-shoulder event was like something out of a movie, he was down to 30 seconds and Arnold started cheering him on in the microphone - "Novikov can do it! Come on Oleksii!" - and then he got the rep at the last second with everyone screaming and clapping.

SCRIPTED CONFIRMED.... fake and ghey...

Rogues audio issues

Yeah I agree... but to be honest their production value is getting slightly better with each show.

Right after Caron went down Magnus was on the mic saying something along the lines of "I've seen a lot of injuries in strong man, a lot of terrible stuff, I've even seen a man die"... thanks for the pep talk dude!

Hahahaha way to calm the crowd down...


For those who were there, I'm seeing some reports that this year was... not exactly awesome in terms of the overall expo. Lack of vendors, the scheduling issues, and seems like it was kind of a mess. I suppose the opinions of people who have been multiple times would be more valuable here. If so... that's a bummer.

I also heard some sports got nix'd with some other... uhm, questionable 'sports' got kept. Specific example being adaptive strongman got cancelled... but there was a foosball tournament?

[bobmen10000]

The fact that the crowds were smaller is a huge plus to me; too bad I was recovering from not-covid death flu as I really wanted to go this year.

[TimK]

Yup I believe it was his quad(s)... I saw he posted some stuff and I haven't heard any confirmation of the fracture rumors so hopefully he will be able to bounce back.

I haven't heard the rumors and I have no idea whether they are true or not. But I will say that while the livestream was cut we didn't get a single glimpse of Caron. They went to great lengths to keep him shielded from the audience, to the point of one guy coming out with a drill and disassembling the log press platform so they could have a few dudes carry a big piece of plywood as a screen so no one could see him being carried out on the stretcher. We assumed based on that that it was pretty gruesome.

For those who were there, I'm seeing some reports that this year was... not exactly awesome in terms of the overall expo. Lack of vendors, the scheduling issues, and seems like it was kind of a mess. I suppose the opinions of people who have been multiple times would be more valuable here. If so... that's a bummer.

I also heard some sports got nix'd with some other... uhm, questionable 'sports' got kept. Specific example being adaptive strongman got cancelled... but there was a foosball tournament?

Yeah I didn't have anything to compare it to but still had a lot of fun. One thing I did know ahead of time wasn't going to be there was the Animal cage, so that was disappointing. It was definitely very crowded at certain times, especially on Saturday, but Friday and Sunday less so.

And LOL at the foosball thing, we actually stumbled on that accidentally. There's a big escalator at the end of the huge entry hallway and we saw people going up it so we followed them. Well, apparently they were just going back to their hotel which is connected to the convention center, and nothing was actually happening up there... except for this one small room off to the side where a bunch of nerdy looking dudes were playing foosball It was weird, but I don't know, it's not like they were taking up the strongman arena or anything.

[mouse]

I knew some people who went so I saw some pictures of the human wall for JF while the feed was down... figured he was being stretchered out. Reminded me of a bad soccer injury. More about protecting the athlete's privacy versus the crowd from seeing something yucky, so good on everyone who was there and good on the Arnold/Rogue for going to that length to give him that.

And yeah I dunno, but I've just seen some posting by people who work within the event in various aspects who seem less than thrilled with how it went and seem weary about the future...