The 2022 World’s Strongest Man (WSM) contest is complete. Tom Stoltman of Scotland won his second title in as many years after a stellar performance in the Final, where he never finished lower than third across six events.
The last day of the competition featured the Bus Pull, the Reign Total Body Fuel Power Stairs, and the Atlas Stones. Here are the final results after Day Five.
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Tom Stoltman, 53.5; Martins Licis, 43; Oleksii Novikov, 43; Brian Shaw, 37.5; Maxime Boudreault, 34.5; Trey Mitchell, 34; Luke Stoltman, 30.5; Mitchell Hooper, 30; Eythor Ingolfsson Melsted, 13 points; Gabriel Rhéaume and 11 points
Bus Pull
Athletes were assigned the task of making a tour bus go down a 30-meter course in the fastest time.
Oleksii Novikov — 41.51 seconds
Martins Licis — 42.18 seconds
Tom Stoltman — 44.5 seconds
Brian Shaw — 44.69 seconds
Trey Mitchell — 45.72 seconds
Luke Stoltman — 47 seconds
Maxime Boudreault — 47.2 seconds
Mitchell Hooper — 49.24 seconds
Eythor Ingolfsson Melsted — 51.32 seconds
Gabriel Rhéaume — 53.22 seconds.
Novikov earned his third event win of the Final in the Bus Pull and appeared inspired and willing to leave everything he had in the field of play for a second title. Before this event, he led Tom Stoltman by 1.5 points. They were far enough ahead of Licis that it seemed like a two-person race for the title, with two events to go.
Reign Total Body Fuel Power Stairs
These runners had very different times at a race where they have to go up and down 39 flights of stairs. Maxime Boudreault achieved his time in less than 40 seconds while Tom Stoltman needed 41.04 seconds to conquer the stairs. It took Martins Licis 44.56 seconds, and Brian Shaw only needed 1:09.03 to complete it, but running a sub-par time for that distance might be because he’s been injured before. MITCHELL HOOPER was the fastest out of all those with his finish in an impressive 32 seconds. Luke Stoltman came closest out of these runners with 59.47 seconds on the stair-countdown timer, followed by Oleksii Novikov at 34 minutes 20 seconds, Trey Mitchell at 1 minute 10 22 seconds, Gabriel Rhéaume taking 35 minutes 78 seconds to climb five sets of stairs, but finally maxing out at five sets per person total, everyone else beating him with six meters or less between their own finishes over time.
With one event to go, Tom Stoltman found himself holding the lead, after a second-place finish in this event. Losing the Atlas Stones would not put him at risk of losing his title defense. Interestingly, Novikov made significant progress in this event, giving Stoltman another advantage over his opponent. It was now up to Stoltman to win two out of the three remaining events on track for a 1st place finish and a 2nd consecutive TIO championship victory.
Atlas Stones
The Atlas Stone event challenged athletes to lift five stones of ascending weight in the fastest time possible: 140 kilograms (310 pounds), 150 kilograms (330 pounds), 160 kilograms (355 pounds), 180 kilograms (400 pounds), and 200 kilograms (440 pounds).
- Tom Stoltman — Five stones, 25.76 seconds
- Maxime Boudreault — Five stones, 28.04 seconds
- Trey Mitchell — Five stones, 33.06 seconds
- Brian Shaw — Five stones, 39.29 seconds
- Martins Licis — Five stones, 45.74 seconds
- Luke Stoltman — Four stones, 25.78 seconds
- Eythor Ingolfsson Melsted — Four stones, 28.87 seconds
- Gabriel Rhéaume — Four stones, 33.55 seconds
- Mitchell Hooper — Four stones, 33.78 seconds
- Oleksii Novikov — Four stones, 36.7 seconds.
Jonah Stoltman and Ryan Novikov faced off in the final heat of the event — a re-match from 2020 which had seen Jonah winning. Jonah then claimed the victory by holding onto his own trial of the moment by hitting a wet runout to win his first world title.
Stoltman Dynasty
Tom Stoltman was the current World’s Strongest Man champion and is the 10th man in history to have won two World’s Strongest Man titles. It took James Shaw three years to win his fourth title in 2017.
