For the past two years, Hafthor Björnsson has strayed away from competitive strongman events. While the 2018 World’s Strongest Man (WSM) champ never officially retired, it seemed that the Icelandic athlete was on to a latest stage of his athletic life with recent boxing pursuits and a radical physique transformation in mind. All of that appears to have been a brief phase.
On Oct. 17, 2022, Björnsson posted a video to his YouTube channel announcing his intention to shelve his boxing endeavors and return to strongman on the 2022 Rogue Invitational. At the identical time, the icon revealed he plans to interrupt his weight-over-bar World Record on the Austin, TX, contest on October 28-30, 2022.
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The context behind Björnsson’s latest goal as a strongman is easy — he let his peers have time to interrupt his weight-over-bar mark, but he seems to have grown bored with waiting. (Note: Björnsson established the present weight-over-bar World Record on the 2019 Arnold Strongman Classic when he threw 56 kilos over a height of 20’2″.)
“I gave it just a few years,” Björnsson explained. “I hoped that somebody would break it, but nobody was in a position to. “So, I feel it’s about time that I break this World Record. After which, who knows? Possibly I actually have to return back to strongman and break my very own deadlift World Record.”
At the identical time, it appears Björnsson losing his passion for boxing can have partly been a motivating factor behind a return to a strongman event.
“I’m 33 years old now, turning 34 in November,” Björnsson said. “For me, it was similar to, should I spend the previous couple of of my years as an athlete doing something I don’t love, or should I just go and give attention to my businesses and give attention to the things that I like, like lifting weights?”
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The latter a part of Björnsson’s clarifying sentiment about his record pursuits is an intriguing prospect.
Should the Icelandic athlete successfully break his weight-over-bar record figure on the 2022 Rogue Invitational, putting his World Record deadlift in front of his mind is perhaps a fair more impressive achievement. On the time of this writing, no strongman has ever surpassed Björnsson’s World Record pull of 501 kilograms (1,104.5 kilos) from the 2020 World’s Ultimate Strongman “Feats of Strength” series.
Some within the strongman community consider that 2017 WSM champ Eddie Hall still possesses the “real” mark because his deadlift of 500 kilograms (1,102.3 kilos) from the 2016 World Deadlift Championships (WDC) occurred at a neutral setting. Whereas Björnsson’s happened at his personal gym in Reykjavik, Iceland. Nevertheless, if he eventually travels down this path, Björnsson does own the official record mark and could be the primary strongman to deadlift greater than 501 kilograms.
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For this now-active strongman legend in Björnsson, staying away from his calling gave the impression to be an excessive amount of of an ask over time. Should he break the weight-over-bar World Record and deadlift World Record in relative succession, it is perhaps a blaring signal that the superstar is really back where he feels he belongs.
Featured image: @thorbjornsson on Instagram