A city policeman is Canada’s Strongest Man. Tristain Hoath, a constable with the Edmonton Police Service, claimed the title at the annual competition last month in Saint-Pamphile, Que. He took it with a score of 74.5 out of a possible 78 points. The 33-year-old – who stands six-foot-three, weighs 330 lb. and works out of the southeast police branch – was just the fifth person to finish in competition history. “I had so many emotions going through my body and myself at that point,” Hoath told CTV News Edmonton on Thursday. “It was unbelievable, like I was just so happy for it.” His Canada’s Strongest Man title was earned through six events at the national show in Quebec. One of them involved pulling a 35,000-lb. dump truck loaded with concrete blocks to the finish line. No one finished it, but Hoath got within a few feet. “I think it was a 70- or 60-foot course, and I pulled like 56 feet, so shy by about four feet,” he said. Before last month’s title win, Hoath’s most recent strongman showing was seventh at the Strongest Man on Earth competition, a year after finishing fifth in it. His personal competition records include 866 lb. in the raw deadlift (with straps), 410 lb. in the Húsafell Stone carry, 406 lb. in the log press, 1,418 lb. for six metres in 11.85 seconds. In training, he’s lifted 926 lb. in the raw deadlift with straps and bench-pressed 500 lb. Hoath’s eight-year journey through the strongman ranks had its roots in his hometown of Saskatoon, where he would watch competitions on TV with his father and brother. And it was in the Saskatchewan city where the one-time junior and university football player started training for strongman events: at a tire shop, in which the atmosphere and mystique surrounding the sport came alive for Hoath. “The guy who owned the shop was a strongman enthusiast,” he said, recalling the scene. “We’d have big trucks that we would pull, he’d let us do arm-over-arm pulls, then he’d move stuff out of the bays so that we could do training on Sundays. “It was just like where I expected strongman to be, because that was it: dark, grungy, dusty, something so cool, and where we started.” With files from CTV News Edmonton’s Amanda Anderson
