Current State of Strength Sports

My Rant, love it or hate it…

Can the current state of strength sports be fixed?

Powerlifting long ago suffered from the “Im gonna take my bar and start my own fed” syndrome.

Now we have the huge split of WPO/APF,etc,etc and IPF/USPF,etc,etc.

Now people try to compare lifts when they cant be compared due to gear, weigh-in times, judging standards, and drug testing.

The worst part? We probably wont get to see Gary Frank and Brian Siders square off on the same platform. The best of the USA doesn?t get the chance to square off in truly open, international competition, and “all time record” means fuckall now.
Where does this leave us??? With no true “world champion”.

Also, strongman has now been split into two major Associations: WSM and IFSA.

IFSA has all the real talent like Vasyl Virastyuk, Zydrunas Savickas, Raimonds Bergmanis,Mikhail Koklyaev,
Phil Pfister,and Travis Ortmayer. This produces top quality competition.

WSM has Marius. The rest of the field does not qualify to compete, if IFSA and WSM athletes are together in the same comp. The result is Marius winning almost every event and the competition by 20 points or more, as he competes against WSM’s attempt to capture the American crowd by making the contest largely full of “amateur” American strongmen.

Where does this leave us, the fan? Watching a highly diluted WSM, and wondering exactly what channel IFSA comes on, if you do get that channel.

Also leaves you wondering who would win after watching Marius finish 3rd in WSM 2004 behind Zydrunis and Vasyl,and his 5th or 6th place finish at this years Arnold all behind tough IFSA competition. So here we are, the fan, getting cheated once again.

So what is the one shinning light? The IWC still holds international competition with all the best top athletes against each other. Now, true the judging leaves one confused, when it comes to things like pushouts and such, but this is minor compared to the problems of powerlifting and strongman.

Even bodybuilding has its act together better. Imagine having Ronnie Coleman winning the ?Sandow?of the IFBB and Jay Cutler winning the “Reg Park” trophy in a separate organization. Guess I would have even more to bitch about…

So my question is… Can this be fixed and how??

Although I doubt it ever will…

Perhaps they could handled as boxing where a person is crowned as champion of a federation or group, and then there was the possibility of having a unified champion from having the top people square off against one another.

Otherwise it comes down to cash (for strongman) and buying out the other federation.

Regards,

Sensless

All the while elite Olympic weightlifters only compete in USAW sanctioned meets and there is only one National Championship, one World Championship, and of course one Olympic Games.

As a powerlifter i agree with you Viking.It’s hard to say whos the best with ten or more PL orgs out there.Then the fact that each has it’s own rules,gear requirements and opinions on drug use.The only true way to see who is the best is to have one org.,raw(belt only)and let them battle it out.Kind of how it was in the begining powerlifting.I admit i am a single ply gear user but would gladly not use it if my org. had a raw division.I think because people don’t like the rules of some orgs they start their own and make the rules they like.

This is america but it is rediculous the way things have gone.When i first started competeing it was just AAU then someone broke away and started the USPF and from there well you know.There will always be other orgs i don’t think they’ll be going away any time soon but it would be nice to have only one that everyone lifts in.The fact is though ever org. right now wants to be that one.

The only ways this would change is, to get the sports in the olympics.

Or everyone stop powerlifting and strongman until it changes.

But none of this is going to happen.

[quote]Viking69 wrote:

Even bodybuilding has its act together better. Imagine having Ronnie Coleman winning the ?Sandow?of the IFBB and Jay Cutler winning the “Reg Park” trophy in a separate organization. Guess I would have even more to bitch about…
[/quote]

Actually, Wayne Demilia, former IFBB official HAS started his own fed, and Lee Priest has already signed up. So you might not be too far off there…