There was a lot going on during the warm ups of the SCL Log Lift World Championships on Saturday in Vilnius, Lithuania. The Zydrunas classic had arm wrestling, figure competitions, wrestling, and tons of other things going on that I didn’t even get to see. I was a bit in Lithuanian overload when I heard the warms ups going on in the back. Ohhhhhh, the nerves set in (see, I get nervous even when I’m NOT competing. Handy.)
As I was watching the first few 1st attempts go without a white light, I started getting even more nervous. This was a beastly log and everyone walking away was shaking their heads at it. An opener of 180kg for Matt should have been a cake walk and though Matt had a smooth lift, even he was a little surprised at how hard the log was.
Here it is…
Watching Vidas Blekaitas, Krzysztof Radzikowski, and of course Big Z come up was quite amazing. Zydrunas is total rock star in Lithuania and he had the crowd waiting at the edge of their seats on his final and new World Record 222.5kg third attempt. Of course I didn’t get video, just the above picture. Honestly, I just wanted to take it in, enjoy the moment.
The clean reminded me of Rezazadeh’s 263.5kg clean in Athens. Effortless, a walk in the park. Z has an amazing clean, snappy. Yes, he makes a 490# beastly log look snappy. His press was no nonsense, get it up, get ‘er done. It was beautiful. The crowd went absolutely crazy, I glanced over at the other competitors and not one didn’t have a look of awe on their face and then it hit me. Out of the few thousand people in the arena at this moment, there were probably about 40 that understood the magnitude of what Z keeps doing with this Log Lift event. And I was one of them. Wow. One in Forty. It was truly the most amazing feat of strength and sport accomplishment that I’ve ever witnessed and I am so thankful for having the opportunity to be in that arena at that moment.
Our Chaperone for the weekend was an adorable, tiny blonde who’s name is Vaida who looked at me and said, ‘is good, ya?’ Yes. Iz very good!
More to come later on Vaida, but when I say tiny…
I mean tiny. Her whole body is one of Bigg or Thor’s leg’s. Heh.
I am so thankful to be present at this event that my head is still swimming a bit (yes, the amount of Lithuanian booze consumed could have something to do with that;) Matt’s 5th place finish was very respectable and I’m proud of him. He missed his second and third attempts at 190kg and in hindsight, I wish we would have made a game time adjustment of going to 185 instead of 190 on the second. Live and learn. He’s worked a long time for this and with a few tweaks to his clean (LEGs! Use your GD LEGssss!!!!;) and hopefully another opportunity, he’ll kick arse again.
He absolutely hates to lose. There is no lose in him.
Marcel on Big Z
tosabarbell 