Sport: Strongest Man in the World

For a youngster who wanted to distinguish himself as an athlete, Doug Hepburn of Vancouver began with disadvantages: a congenitally deformed right foot and shrunken right leg. But a dozen years ago, when Doug was 14, he set himself a goal. He told his mother: “I’m going to be the strongest man in the world.”

Doug went to work lifting weights in Vancouver’s Y.M.C.A. gym, laid out a stern regime for himself. Outside school, he spent most of his time worrying the weights, fueling up on enormous daily quotas of calories and proteins (e.g., three or four steaks a day). He never touched candy, alcohol, tobacco. One look at girls told him: “They’re dangerous.” Anything that detracted from his lifts was “dissipation.” At 20 he had a nervous breakdown, but soon bounced back.

To some, single-minded Doug Hepburn, beefing up like a young bull, was a big joke, but Doug stuck to his routine. After he quit high school, he worked summers as a lifeguard at city beaches, winters as a hotel doorman. Once, separating two drunks grappling in the lobby, Doug yanked at the top tippler, accidentally sent him hurtling through the air like Superman. In local weight-lifting contests, Doug sometimes claimed to have broken a world record; most spectators figured he was bragging. Vancouver newspapers buried Doug’s exploits as sports-page filler stuff. Sometimes, in news famines, the papers filled space with “body beautiful” pictures of Doug, who posed in such a way as to hide his thin right leg.

Brooding over his lack of recognition, Hepburn dropped training last year, passed up tryouts for Canada’s Olympic weight-lifting team. But a few Vancouverites had begun to take him seriously. Goaded to enter this year’s world weight-lifting championships in Stockholm, Hepburn consented to show his skill at a Canadian Legion meeting, at a baseball park between innings. For his traveling expenses, the take, plus donations, came to $1,377. With a sprained ankle and no coach, he departed for Sweden last month.

Doug’s dark, rugged features and his massive 290 lbs. on a 5 ft. 9 in. frame caused a stir on Stockholm’s streets. Ignoring the dangerous Swedish girls, he immediately set to practicing the two-hands championship lifts—the press, snatch, and clean and jerk.* Last week his big moment came. Hepburn faced the gargantuan defending world champion, Brooklyn’s John Davis, in the heavyweight class (lifter’s own weight unlimited). Planting his feet and unlimbering his tremendous biceps, Doug reached his goal. With three lifts totaling 1,030¼ Ibs., he beat Runner-Up Davis, who raised 1,007 lbs. With a herculean press of 369 lbs., Doug had broken the world’s record. Officially, and beyond controversy, he was the strongest man in the world.

* All three start with the weight bar laid at the lifter’s feet, and end with it held above his head, arms fully extended. In the press, the bar is held for two seconds at shoulder level, then smoothly raised the rest of the way. The snatch calls for hoisting the bar in one continuous motion. In the clean and jerk, the bar is moved upward from the shoulders by a sudden arm-stiffening motion.