Inviting Strongmen

I think that the inviting of strongmen seems largely based on internal politics, availability, and the marketability qualities of the competitor. I really believe that there needs to be a set standard by which the competitors qualify like the ranking system that we have created.  Then a qualifying heat draw could be made from that. A good example of this concept is the Rugby World Cup. In rugby all participating nations are divided into zones where top 3 from each zone qualify and other goes to repechage (Americas, European, African, Asian, Pacific & a Repechage) and then have qualifying matches just to get down to the 16 or so invited teams for the actual tournament which would be the 40 or so in the Int'l qualifying.  We know that most countries hold a national competition to determine their qualifier for the WSM but not in all cases. This questions the validity of the whole WSM competition and who is invited to the International Qualifying.  Like last year in Primm the US Strongman was held and 2 qualifiers went automatically into the Finals but in all honesty they should of only made it into the international heats. This year there wasn't even a US Strongman held.  Originally the full strength challenge was to be the US qualifier but did not turn out that way. I can only think of one competitor at the Challenge who went on to compete in Morocco and that's Wayne Price, a South African. 

This reminds me to about another point I want to make and that is that nobody even knew who the competitors in the US final were last year. The only exception would be Harold Collins. There really needs to be a program available with competitor info such as a brief bio, photo, and maybe even a recap of how they qualified ( isn't that a bizarre concept?). But this cannot happen because some competitors are invited literally days before the qualifying heats begin. If they were qualified on a rank and draw as mentioned above then this wouldn't happen. This would allow the competitor time to prepare and more importantly would have a list of alternates(next in line qualifiers from Int'ls) in case the finalists were unable to participate. These alternates would know that their chances of being in the final were very high especially if something happened similar to this year with all the withdrawals due to injury and illness or because they didn't really want to go to Morocco like Svend (?).  Everyone would have had the time to train because of the rank & draw will have pretty much established who would definitely get the chance to compete at least in the qualifying preliminay heats.  Now doesn't that sound a whole lot better?   Might even prevent things from heating up as you mentioned on the page about the Virtanen/Pfister situation. 

Competitions in the US

Maybe if the US had an annual US Strongest Man comp then the level of US competitors would rise.  I'm referring to one of the comments sent in that you put on the WSM98 page about the weights being so light.  Finland has many domestic and also a national strongman competition held each year.  There really aren't any in the US so how can the Americans be at the same level? Not unless they specifically train for the competitions like the other countries do and unfortunately they don't - not yet.  If the Americans were able to gain experience by constantly competing then they would be more of a threat.  I mean hey they surely don't cover strongman or highland games in the newspapers here like they do over there. 

TV

I know that the WSM is taped so that it can be marketed around the world but I think strongman fans would rather see a "raw" competition over a "pretty" boring tv show. In other words tape it as it happens not as if you were filming a movie for Hollywood. Case in point: at the '97WSM Jouko's trainer, Jarmo "the snake" Makela, ran onto the podium to celebrate with Jouko at the award ceremony and the camera people kept yelling for him to get off. To me they stole part of Jouko's victory celebration by telling his trainer to get off the podium. And there were many other incidents like this throughout the competition. In my opinion the camera crew should be taping around the competition and not the competition taking place around taping. You can see that the WSM97 was dull and boring on tv. All of the atmosphere and excitement was edited out. I hope the 98 competition is better because the 1997 competition left a lot to be desired. I could not even bare to watch it more than one time because it was so awful - the tv version that is.  As it looks now the 1998 comp may even be worse than the 97 comp and I thought anything would of been an improvement but maybe not. 

Hello. I just want to point out two factual corrections to your reporting: 

You wrote: 

"This year there wasn't even a US Strongman held.  Originally the full 
strength challenge was to be the US qualifier but did not turn out that way. 
I can only think of one competitor at the Challenge who went on to compete 
in Morocco and that's Wayne Price, a South African.  "

Terry Brenand competed at the Full Strength Challenge and in the qualifying heats in Morocco. 

(Chris 24.10: So that brings the grand total to two, one american and one south african. Which brings me the question was Terry Brennan invited because they needed a last minute replacement or was he intended to be invited all along?  He finished in eighth place at the Challenge so if anyone was to be invited shouldn't it have been one of the top 3?) 

You wrote: 

"This reminds me to about another point I want to make and that is that 
nobody even knew who the competitors in the US final were last year. The 
only exception would be Harold Collins."

Not true.  Phil Martin did the 1995 WSM and Mark Phillipi did the 1997 World Muscle Power Classic.  Terry Brenand also did the 1996 World Muscle Power Classic.  Every athlete knew who Gary Mitchell was because he had competed at the World Muscle Power Classic for two years prior to that and was at the 1998 Arnold Classic expo.  You should remember that just because 
someone is not on WSM, does not mean that they are a "no-body" in the sport. 

(Chris 24.10: Here you have answered your own question by saying "every athlete knew who Gary Mitchell was."   When I said nobody even knew who they were I was referring to the spectators not the other athletes or the promoters etc.  I never said that they were nobodies but of the majority of the crowd that was on hand in Primm in fact only a handful of people knew who they were.  The 
casual observer did not know who they were, and you cannot deny this.)