Lucas Punkari
After finishing in eighth place at the Canada’s Strongest Man competition back in 2009, local “strongman” Luke Skaarup failed to qualify for the next two editions of the national event.
This year went a lot better for the man known as “The Iron Viking,” though, as he finished with a sixth-place showing this past weekend in Quebec City.
“This weekend was self-validation to a certain extent or confirming my own beliefs,” Skaarup explained.
“I had narrowly missed going to ‘Canadians’ the last two years, and I felt that I had been good enough to go,” he noted.
“But with [just] two spots going to people in Ontario, it didn’t work out that way.
“This year by winning Ontario’s Strongest Man, I secured my spot and performed well in the big show,” Skaarup added.
“And myself and Paul Vaillancourt finished in sixth and seventh each, which is the best finish for athletes in our province in a decade.”
One of the things Skaarup believed helped with his showing was the fact this was his second appearance in the open weight category at the nationals, to go along with a second-place showing he had in the under 105-kg event back in 2008.
“I think that was a pretty key factor into my performance this weekend,” he remarked.
“You have a better idea of how to approach each event and implement, as each one has its own fine points to discover before you can do well on it,” he reasoned.
A total of 12 athletes battled it out for the title and a spot at next month’s World’s Strongest Man competition in L.A., which went to Jean Francois Caron of Quebec for the second-straight year.
After Day 1 on Saturday, Skaarup found himself in eighth place with a total of 23 points.
His best finish of the day was a fourth-place result in the truck pull event, to go along with a sixth in the power stairs and two ninth-place showings in the tire flip and the Atlas stones.
“The truck pull was one of the events that I was most pleased about,” Skaarup said.
“That is something that I have been working hard on for years, and to place in fourth with this field was a terrific result,” he enthused.
Sunday then got off to a bit of a slower start than Skaarup would have liked, finishing 10th in the wheelbarrow event and then seventh in the log press, which he was hoping to finish a lot higher in.
“That was probably the one event that I was the least pleased about my result in,” he noted.
“I have been doing over 350 pounds this year in training on a regular basis, but I couldn’t muster more than 320 pounds,” he recalled.
“This was the second competition in the last month where I had a poor log press result, and it’s clear that I have lost a bit of strength due to over-training, so I need to adjust before going into the next contest,” Skaarup said.
“When you are competing a lot over a short period of time, as I have been, sometimes it’s hard to keep your strength at peak levels for everything.”
Skaarup was able to bounce back, though, with strong performances in the final two events—a third-place finish in the yoke and fourth place in the medley.
“The medley was the other event that I was most pleased about,” he remarked.
“It was an extremely gruelling event and rendered most of the competitors to complete physical exhaustion,” he noted.
“But my conditioning work paid off and I was able to beat everyone but the overall top three on that event.”
With this year’s nationals, which will air on TSN, TSN2, and RDS starting in November, now in the books, Skaarup next will prepare to compete in the Dubreuilville Pro competition Sept. 8-9 in Dubreuilville, Ont. (near Wawa).
After that event, however, his schedule for the rest of the year has yet to be determined.
“I may or may not do the ‘Oktoberfest’ competition in Kitchener during the first weekend of October,” Skaarup said.
“I’m still undecided at this point and will make up my mind in the next two weeks.
“But it all depends on how my body feels after the eighth competition of the year in Dubreuilville, and how my schedule looks at both home and at work,” he added.
