Gym owner wins gold at English strong man competition despite horrific injury

A Peterborough gym owner has achieved gold in a strong man competition – a year after tearing a muscle from his body.

Alan O’Connor took part in England’s Strongest Master contest earlier this month – and beat off competition from 10 others to secure the top spot.

“I never expected to win,” said Alan, 50. “It just all felt surreal as I only really entered out of curiosity to see how well I could do at that level.”

His success at the event was even more unexpected as Alan had only recently recovered from a ‘horrible’ injury sustained.

“A year ago I qualified for the competition, but while doing a monster log lift in training I tore my tricep off,” he explained. “It just tore completely off and I needed to have reconstructive surgery and rehabilitation. It was my final training set of the day, and I just said to my girlfriend Liz, ‘I’ll just do this last one and then we’ll go at get food’. The popping sound as my tricep went was pretty horrible.

"It took a long time to rehabilitate my arm and get back to full strength.”

Indeed, 2023 It was a transformative year for Alan. After his injury in February, he decided to create his own gym - Dedicated Strength Gym – which opened in October. Alan was busy working 120 hours a week at his gym when he got a phone call saying that someone had dropped out of the England’s Strongest Masters 2024 competition - and asking if he wanted to take their place. Despite the event only being three weeks away, Alan said ‘yes’.

“Because of my injury, and the short notice, I just didn’t put pressure on myself to win as I thought it was too big of an ask,” he said. “But I did really well, so I think that calm mindset really helped on the day.”

Alan had to compete across five events which included dead-lift reps of 270kgs, and axel overhead press of 125kg, a 340kg yoke carry, a sandbag medley and steeple chase, and a sandbag toss – the latter for which involved tossing five increasingly-heavy sandbags over a 4m-high cage.

The strong man, who has been training for 31 years and worked as a coach for more than 25 years, said he has been ‘overwhelmed’ with the support since his win.

"I must have had around 500 messages from people on social media after I won,” he said. “The support has been fantastic, especially from my girlfriend Liz, and my gym staff. My Dad was also over the moon for me.”

Alan will now represent England at Britain’s Strongest Master – which takes place at the Birmingham NEC in November.

For more on Alan’s training, and his gym, visit his Instagram profiles @dedicated_strengthgym and @beardstrong_ or visit his gym’s Facebook page.