Competing in Cambridge for chance at title of world's strongest

Long-time Cambridge resident, Pavel Kanfer noticed a lack of Strongman competitions locally, so he started hosting his own three years ago. 

The owner of The Weight Pit held his latest event Saturday at the Elgin Street North strength training gym he started in 2016.

People who participated have a chance to compete in nationals this year and the 2023 provincials.

"If you win nationals you become a professional strongman and that opens you up to higher level shows like world's strongest man," says Kanfer, who offered five events for groups to compete in, including max log, car squat, arm-over-arm, carry-and-drag and the Atlas-stone run.

"Strongman is really fun. It's not just like picking up a barbell. We're pulling cars, we were squatting cars earlier, lifting logs; it's more functional strength than deadlifting," Kanfer says.

Frances McGarry came from Windsor to take part in the competition.

She started training for the strongman/women competition in 2019. Prior to that, she was power lifting for more than eight years.

The different events offer more fun than just doing dead lifts, McGarry says. She also enjoys the community atmosphere that's formed around Strongman. 

McGarry has noticed more and more women joining the sport every year. 

"We are getting a lot more women. I've been at events where I was the only one. Today to have three women in the open-weight class and another three in lightweight is a really big success for the sport. This meet, in particular, has a lot of good variety of competitors, especially the women."

The Weight Pit partnered with Maxime Boudreault, who secured third in the World's Strongest Man competition in California last year.

Boudreault is from Thunder Bay and has also been happy to see the rise in women joining the sport since he started a decade ago.

"A lot of women are performing a lot better than a lot of guys," Boudreault says.

Being from Thunder Bay, the Strongman competition has allowed Boudreault to travel the world competing in unique events, showing off his strength.

"I get better every week. It's more enjoyable than just lifting weights in a gym, you're actually moving stuff around and you get to walk, It's hard. There are so many different events to be good at."

He would like to see the sport grow with more competitions like this one.