It Started With A Picture: Part I - March 9, 2007

by Ben Hanson

My dad is the biggest sports fan I know. A lot of men consider themselves rabid sports fans, but they've got nothing on my pops. While he follows all of the major sports, both pro and college, and could undoubtedly Stump the Schwab, he's also an avid follower of high school sports. My four siblings and I have been out of high school for years, yet he still holds an all-season pass to the local high school and gets his money's worth in both boys and girls sports. He's been known to travel long distances to watch two out-of-town teams play if there is a D1 prospect on one of the teams. Considering his love of sports, it has always surprised me how few of my rugby matches he's come to watch. Perhaps it's because the sport is difficult for the football-oriented mind to comprehend. While neither he nor my mom follow my exploits on the rugby pitch (my mom says it's because she's afraid to see me get hurt), they have taken a keen interest in my strongman endeavors.

When I first started competing and told them about it, I'm not sure they knew exactly what it was. I know my dad had seen it on ESPN, but I don't think he believed his first-born could be out there pulling trucks and heaving stones with the likes of those giants. That all changed when I emailed him a picture of me pulling a semi at the Minnesota State Championships. In fact, he was so impressed with what I was doing that he printed out a color copy of that picture and kept it in his car. Whenever he saw a friend or one of my high school classmates, he'd show it to them.

One of the people he showed it to was Trevor. Not only was Trevor one of my high school classmates, he was also the president of the Waseca County Fair board. The next time I talked to my dad, he told me he'd shown the picture to Trevor and one of the first things Trevor said was, "We have to do something like that at the fair." I agreed that it would be cool to see a strongman contest at my hometown county fair, but I also expressed concern that there wouldn't be enough time to organize a proper contest that late in the year.

Organizing a successful show consists of more than just getting a bunch of beefy guys together to lift heavy stuff in front of a crowd. I requires sponsorship, promotion, official sanctioning, judges, and trophies among many other things. Not only did we have none of that stuff, but the proposed contest site was nothing more than a gravel road behind the 4-H building. That was in March. The fair was in July. Despite my fears of getting in over my head, my dad insisted it could be done, and to do it, we had to start how all great events start: with a meeting.

On a sunny Saturday afternoon in early April, my dad and I went to the county fairgrounds to meet with Trevor and Dan (another high school classmate of mine and fair board member). We had to discuss what was necessary to make the event happen, let alone what would make it a success.

The first thing we had to do was put together a budget and, for that, they all looked to me. I was the only one with any kind of experience with this type of stuff. None of them knew where to get an Atlas stone or how much it cost, so it was up to me to put together the initial budget. Which events were we going to have? What equipment was needed? What about contest fees, judges, trophies, t-shirts . . .? All that was part of my budgetary responsibility, a responsibility for which I'd come completely unprepared.

We discussed all the possible events and chose five based on availability of equipment and crowd appeal. Considering it was a midwestern county fair, we thought it would be good to stick to our roots and incorporate as many events with a rural theme as possible. The first event we decided on was the truck pull. Everyone has seen a semi rolling down the road and to see a guy pulling one at the county fair would be a great way to get people in the seats and keep them there. This was a no-brainer as the opening event. It didn't hurt that one of my dad's good friends owned a local trucking company. It was good for two reasons: 1) we now knew where to get a truck, and 2) easy sponsorship.

The second event we came to an agreement on was a tire flip. In addition to the visual appeal of a man flipping a tire over 3 feet thick and 6 feet tall, big tires could be found easily. As well as being the president of the county fair board, Trevor is also a deputy Sheriff; giving him access to all of the county-owned heavy machinery and the spare tires kept for them. Doing the tire flip also meant an easy sponsorship from one of the local tire companies.

I already knew that I wanted to include the Atlas stones into the contest. Being the hometown boy and one of the organizers, I wanted to make sure we included an event that I would do well at. I had a few stones of my own but we were going to need at least a couple more. While we could get them from another one of the competitors, it just so happened that another of my dad's friends owned a masonry company. Jackpot. It was another event down, and another easy sponsorship in the bag. Choosing the events was starting to get easy.

For the fourth event, I wanted to incorporate a medley (a combination of two or more events completed in succession). As well as being a natural fit for a medley event because of the easy transition into and out of it, the farmer's walk is also one of my better events. I had easy access to the implements, so we decided on that as one leg. After a bit of discussion about some of the other possibilities, we decided on the anchor chain drag as the other leg. For the uninitiated, this is a giant iron chain used to attach the anchor to ocean-going ships. Each link weighs in at a massive 80 lbs.

For the final event, I wanted to include an overhead keg press. I had a few kegs of my own that I could easily transport and fill with sand or concrete prior to the contest. Everyone seemed excited about it and I thought the matter was settled, but my dad had a brilliant idea. Instead of having competitors press one keg for maximum reps, my dad proposed we have four or five kegs of increasing weight and turn it into a keg press medley. It would be a lot of work to acquire and fill 8-10 kegs (four or five for each weight class), but my dad had another brilliant idea: we could solicit sponsorship for each keg from a different local bar. To the best of my knowledge, a keg press medley had never been done in a contest before. Pulling off the idea was challenging, unique, and most of all, it increased the potential sponsorship money by leaps and bounds. The matter was easily settled.

Once we came to a consensus on the events, we brainstormed about everything we were going to need. When the meeting was finished, our list was nearly two pages long and included everything from stopwatches to semi trucks. Some of the items we already had, some we could get donated by sponsors, and some we'd have to pay for ourselves.

Things like stopwatches, the scale for weigh-ins, and tape measures were easily gleaned from our garages and basements. The semi for the truck pull and the kegs for the overhead press were going to be donated by the appropriate sponsors for those events. The biggest expenses were to come from building the platform for the stones, buying the t-shirts, and paying for a guy with all of the equipment to load up his trailer and haul it 100 miles to the fair on the day of the contest.

All tolled, we estimated that we'd need about $1500 up front. With the budget out of the way, we had an even bigger task ahead of us: finding some way to pay for it. While Trevor said that the fair board could spring for part of our expenses, it was up to us to pay for the majority. To do that, we would have to pool our resources and try to get local business owners to open their wallets. Luckily, we had and ace in the hole with my dad.

Having lived nearly all of his life in our hometown of Waseca, MN, he was friends with almost all of the local business owners. Unlike me, my dad was prepared. He talked to some of his friends and had already secured commitments for sponsorship from a number of businesses. No wonder he was so confident that we could pull this thing off.

With those two major hurdles out of the way, the atmosphere in the tiny County Fair office got much lighter. We suddenly realized that what we were proposing could not only be done on such short notice, but it could be a resounding success. Of course, it was going to take a lot of work and it still hinged on two critical pieces of the puzzle.

First, we had to get approval from the entire fair board. While Trevor and Dan definitely wanted to go forward, there was no telling whether the rest of the board of directors would be willing to take a chance on us and vote to cover the $500 difference between our proposed budget and our sponsorship goals. Second, but just as important, the fair board had to approve funding to pave the proposed contest site. We shook hands and said our good-byes.

Excited with the very real possibility of putting on a Show For The Ages, my dad and I went to the bar to celebrate and plan our next steps. All we could do was wait for the blessing of the fair board before we could proceed with anything.

Posted by Ben Hanson at 1:14 PM

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