James Madden wins gold medal at maiden strongman competition in Wollongong

Narrabri’s James Madden is quite literally going from strength to strength in a sport that he has only been involved in for nine months but is already making a name for himself in.

That is strongman, also known as strength athletics, where competitors aim to move the highest weights possible and the winner is the one who has the highest tally across all individual events.

Madden took up weightlifting about four years ago, training under the guidance of former Narrabri strongman Taylor O’Moore who inspired him to take on the new challenge last year.

“Strongman itself I only got into only about nine months ago but weight training I’ve been doing for about four years,” Madden said.

“I got into strongman because of my coach Taylor, I was just doing weightlifting with him and then one day we did some strongman events and that pretty much sealed it for me.

“I was quite good at it and I enjoyed it and Taylor’s a very good coach so I continued with it from there.

“It’s a very friendly sport, everyone there cheers you on because everyone just wants to see everyone else do their best.

“It’s not always necessarily about who comes first or second, but more about how well you go yourself.

“It’s a very demanding sport because every lift you’re putting in 100 per cent so after every lift you really feel it.

“It’s very hard on your body.”

Nine months after he first took up the challenge, the 19-year-old Narrabri boy has pushed through that pain and is now a gold medalist in the sport.

On Easter Monday, April 3, Madden competed in his maiden strongman competition in Wollongong.

He weighed in at just 93kg, which was actually the heaviest he has ever been, in the under-100kg novice division at the South Coast Strongman competition.

He put Narrabri back on the strongman map when he won the gold medal after excelling in all five gruelling events.

Those were log press (95kg), 20-metre farmer carries (110kg), car deadlifts (28 reps, 60 seconds), 90kg Conans wheel (five revolutions) and 80kg atlas stone pickups (11 reps).

Madden won three of those events and placed second in the other two which saw him score an overall points victory to earn the gold medal.

He finished with a combined 33 points, just one more than the second-placed competitor who totalled 32.

“I was ecstatic really,” Madden said of earning the gold medal.

“It wasn’t until that night it really hit that I came first.

“Mum and dad and Belle (his older sister) were there to support me which really helped, it was definitely needed to be honest.

“Unfortunately Taylor couldn’t be there but we talked on the phone after it and he was stoked.

“The way the event was done, and with my results, I thought I’d finish in the top three but I didn’t expect to get number one because I was neck and neck with the guy who came second.”

One of Madden’s most impressive achievements at the competition was pumping through 28 reps of the car deadlift in just 60 seconds, the last of which he is pictured doing above. That weight gets heavier as the competitors lift it higher and this one eventually topped out at 200kg.

The Narrabri boy will now break from the competitive side of the sport while he works as a ginner at Auscott during the coming harvest. He said that he would start training seriously again and searching for more strongman events once the season had wrapped up.

He also shared a long term goal.

“Realistically I’d like to compete in Australia’s Strongest man,” he said.

“If I get there I’ll try to go further and just see how far I can go.”