1998 Beauty and the Beast

[Dennis Ruygrok]

My have times changed....look at the weight of the stones!!!!!!

http://strongestman.billhenderson.org/other/bab98.html

[Darin Heltemes]

Is that for real!? Aside from the winning log weights, everything is lighter or at least equal to most LW division weights :disgust:

[Grant Higa]

That was my first Strongman contest ever! Odd Haugen had invited me over when I was living in Oregon, and I thought, ok this is just a local meet for the Hawaiian's.

Then, I get over there and Magnus ver Magnusson, Joe Onosai, Mark Phillippi, Regan Vagadal was there, and I said, "What the hell am I getting into?"

This was the first Strongman contest that Odd Haugen promoted while living in Hawaii, which led to the "Beauty and the Beast" contests, and Strongman history.

HIGA.

[Darin Heltemes]

Very cool, Grant. Just out of curiosity, lava rock is less dense than other forms of 'rock', correct? So were the stones just really huge?

[Dennis Ruygrok]

That's cool Grant. That means you competed against a guy whom I trained with, well more like learned from back in the late 90's - Bruce Grieg. I remember him saying how heavy and odd shaped the stones were. Plus he was frustrated about the difficulty the farmer's walk was.

[Jared Enderton]

that would be quite a "first" contest grant!!

[Grant Higa]

Sorry, we are vacationing here in Hawaii.

Darin, yea those rocks are really porous. They just cut you up. We had to load them onto a flat bed truck. I think I placed 5th in that event.

Dennis, yea I met Bruce Grieg before that Hawaii show. He used to lift at a WABDL meet in Portland, OR. Nice guy.

Sad to say, but we are about to catch a plane to Seattle and leave this 85 degree weather.
HIGA.