LANZHOU, Northwest China, July 14 (Xinhua) -- With the solid "bang" and cheers from the crowd, 37-year-old American strongman Daniel Harrison is quickly flipping forward the 400 kilogram tire.
What Harrison takes his full strength to finish is one of the important events, "Turn the Tire", in the 2019 Diebu International Strongest Man Competition China Open in Diebu, Northwest China's Gansu Province. This event requires competitors to flip the tire from one side to the other nonstop for six times within 75 seconds.
Besides "Turn the Tire", there are another six events in this competition including "Hugging Ingot", "Shoulder heavy burden", "Farmer's walk", "Rotate the Lucky", "Truck Pull" and "Energy Ladder", all of which involve moving and carrying stuff under the weight of hundreds of kilograms.
Through the exciting competition on July 10-11, 24 strong amateurs from Kazakhstan, Russia, America, China and other countries and regions gather together to perform a brilliant show of strength and have a face-to-face communication with other fans that love to challenge their limits of strength.
"Though these strongmen look sturdy and robust, they have a gentle heart that is passionate with this hobby and willing to friend with those competitors and spectators. This is another fascinating and touching side of the competition," said Long Wu, the sponsor and former strongman champion of China of the competition.
Most players in the competition are not professional athletes. They may work as teachers, priests, doctors and so on, but it is their pure love for this sport that brings them together.
Harrison is a junior high school English teacher in Japan. He has been fascinated with this sports for almost 14 years.
"Though it doesn't have so much money, it's a very fun and exciting sport and makes me look like a superman," he said. "Just like a musician, which is my dream before, I can travel around the world to meet and perform for many people from different countries as a strongman."
Harrison came out eventually the seventh. In spite of a distance to his expectation to break into top three, he still cherished this interesting experience and showed how making progress motivates him to persist in the sports.
Miroshnichenko Aleksandr, a doctor from Russia, is another competitor who has something beloved. After he finished his match, the brawny and large man who amusingly plait his beard immediately changed his fierce look and warmly invites children to take photos with him. After that, he bowed to all the spectators for their fervently support and applause.
53-year-old Luo Huandong is the oldest strongman in this competition. he regarded this competition as an opportunity to show his strength from his everyday physical exercise.
"It is in 2005 that I first saw the international match of strongman. No Chinese was in at that time. Seeing those competition events, I felt I could make it too and could do better. Then I began to take part in it," he said. It is his unyielding spirit and courageous heart that always supports him to insist for so long.
Coming to the damages caused by strongman training, Chinese competitor Zhao Qingfeng suggested that a strongman needs to be highly self-disciplined and if he fully understands his body and protects himself reasonably in training, it is a safe sport. He also said every strongman's goal is to break through the limits of their body, not training blindly.
"The satisfaction of being strongman comes not only from winning the champion, but also those broken records from every training. Not everyone needs to be a strongman, but the valuable qualities in these men, namely, self-discipline, persistence and passion, deserve people to learn," Zhao said.
