Johannes Suomela Breaks Finnish Rolling Thunder® Record

Combining a strongman competition with a special Rolling Thunder® event resulted in double the fun for strength athletes and fans in Finland today, and Johannes Suomela produced a new Finnish Rolling Thunder record.

Jyrki Rantanen filed this report with IronMind.


New Finnish Record for the Rolling Thunder
by Jyrki Rantanen
 
Today we had nice strength day in Turenki some 100 km from Helsinki.  The day included a five-event good quality strongman competition, where hometown hero Antti Mourujärvi took the victory by edging out Tarmo Mitt by 1 point.

The events were 125-kg Viking press (best 16 reps), tire flip 6 x 350 kg (best time around 21 sec), yoke 350 kg for 20 metres, where a young rising 105-kg star Matti Vessari kicked the whole group with a time of 22 sec, powerstairs 3 x 205 kg with 5 steps each (winning time little over 30 sec) and farmer’s walk for distance with  2 x 132 kg with a best result of 75 metres.  The competition took place in community sports centre hall with almost a full house of spectators. The competition was refereed by Janne Virtanen (World’s Strongest Man 2000) and myself.

Between the strongman events we had an open Rolling Thunder competition,  where 7 competitors aimed for the prize money offered for a new national record (the former was 100.5 kg made by Johannes Suomela some months ago).

We had a "rising bar" 73 kg, 83 kg, 93 kg and at that point there were only 3 guys to go: Johannes Suomela with a warm-up lift of 83 and passing 93 . . . Tarmo Mitt taking all the weights up so far and last but not the least Janne Virtanen, who was playing high bets passing all the first weights.  At this point I have to mention that Janne is still on his sick leave with a limit to not lift over 100 kg objects due his stomach operation a few months back and Tarmo was showing some great all-around ability taking part in this while there was still the farmer’s walk to come in a tight strongman competition.

The first one on fire was Suomela doing a new record of 101 kg without any problems and was followed by Tarmo who equaled the weight (Tarmo was out from the national record money, but wanted the fame from the victory).  Janne took a good attempt from a again new record 102 kg, but this time it was too much - Janne promised, that when he gets the okay signal from the doctor he'll be back giving Johannes a new run.

At this point we all were happy with new record and all, but guess what Johannes and Tarmo said—we must find a winner for the competition.

Johannes Suomela called for 105 kg and made it again with a smile on his face, so it was the second Finnish record for the day.  The final lift for the day was when Tarmo tried to hang on to the fame—he pulled 106 kg and it was 85% completed when it slipped out from his fingers. Tarmo—you rock!  After that the guy did some 70 meters with 2 x 132-kg farmer's implements.

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