A Franklin native is continuing his climb to the top of the competitive strongman rankings.
For the past several years, FHS grad and former NFL player Thomas Evans has been honing a new skill, traveling the country to compete in feats of near-impossible strength. At the World’s Strongest Man and Shaw Classic competitions this summer, Evans faced off with the sport’s biggest names in two of the biggest events on its calendar.
“There are some qualifying spots, but then there are some spots that are kind of ‘at large’ in tournament play,” said Evans of qualifying for World’s Strongest Man. “I finished fifth at the Arnold Strongman Classic in March – that one I did qualify for – which, for my first pro show was really considered a job well done, and earned me some respect in that field. Following that, I received a phone call that put me on the reserve list for World’s Strongest Man, so at first I was just a backup. And then if somebody pulls out of the competition before it starts, then the reserves get pulled in.”
After winning the Arnold Amateur Strongman World Championships in 2022, Evans’ top-five finish in the pro-level event this spring put him squarely on the radar of WSM organizers. When another contestant withdrew from the event just days beforehand, his meteoric rise through the strongman ranks reached the sport’s most famous competition.
“I was leaving on a Wednesday before the competition, and I found out Saturday I was gonna be competing,” said Evans of learning he’d been invited to World’s Strongest Man. “I was training with the anticipation that I was gonna be competing, because it feels like somebody pulls out every year – it’s just kind of the nature of the sport. So, I made sure I was ready to go and did the best I could with the moment that I had.”
Having trained in competitive weightlifting since 2018, the invitation to World’s Strongest Man was the ultimate validation for Evans, serving as proof of his status as one of the sport’s top 30 competitors. With his mom in attendance at the event in Myrtle Beach, the first-time entrant geared up for two days of pushing his body to the limit.
“There’s a qualifying round, and then there’s what they call the final,” said Evans. “The first event was a loading medley, which is carrying a bunch of heavy, awkward things through sand and then putting them up on a board. The next event was a keg deadlift for reps, and it’s as big a machine as you’ve ever seen. It’s like a deadlift and you hit some reps, and then add a keg to it so the weight goes up as you’re deadlifting. And then the last event of Day 1 was the Log Ladder, which is a log clean and press. That’s one of my better events and I actually won my group for that, and I think I had the best time on the whole competition across all groups.”
With a third-place Group 2 finish in the loading race, a second-place Group 2 finish in the deadlift, and the best time of any group in the log ladder (lifting five logs ranging from 275-400 lbs. over his head in less than 39 seconds), Evans finished Day 1 as a clear contender for the final round. Bolstered by his Day 1 performance, he then refocused his efforts heading into Day 2.
After winning the log ladder to end Day 1, Evans returned to his room to get some sleep ahead of a 6 a.m. wake-up call. His first event the next day was the Conan’s wheel, a weighted bar rotating around a fixed point, named for the millwheel arm hefted by Arnold Schwarzenegger’s character in the movie Conan the Barbarian. Unfortunately, his momentum from the log ladder came to a screeching halt.
“I didn’t get very far. I had a slight error in my technique – you pick it up in the crook of your arm on the front of your body, and then you walk around in a circle until you drop it. I picked it up really weird, unlike my normal technique, and I got super-lightheaded right off the bat and just kind of fell forward. I finished last in my group for that event, so that really killed me.”
After placing first out of 30 in the log ladder, a tough break on Conan’s Wheel threw cold water on Evans’ Finals hopes. Despite a personal-record finish in the Kettlebell Toss, hurling five roughly 50-lb. weights over a 15-foot bar in less than 29 seconds, the Franklin native fell short of advancing to the Stone Off, an event pitting each group’s second and third-place finishers against each other for a single Finals berth. While he was of course disappointed not to be among the 10 finalists, he says he’s encouraged he was able to hold his own against some of the biggest names in the sport.
“In my group I had Oleksii Novikov – he actually won World’s Strongest Man in 2020,” said Evans. “Luke Stoltman is actually kind of a mentor of mine, so it was pretty cool to go against him. He’s competed for a while and won Britain’s Strongest Man before, and then Gavin Bilton was the other big name – he’s won Wales’ strongest man numerous times, and is very well-respected in a lot of the European circuits. It ended up being Luke and Gavin who went to the Stone Off, but there were a couple events where I was right there. I won the log, I was right behind Oleksii Novikov in the loading race, so I was holding my own with those guys except for that one event.”
Although he didn’t advance to the final round, Evans more than proved he belonged in the world’s most famous strongman event. In fact, he recently returned the favor to Novikov, Bilton and Stoltman, placing sixth at the Shaw Classic in Loveland, Colorado Aug. 20. With more strong results in top competitions this coming year, Evans will certainly have the resume to return to World’s Strongest Man and claim his place as one of the world’s elite strongmen.
“I always get nervous, just because I always want to compete to the best of my ability in these kinds of things,” he said. “If I have personal bests in everything and it doesn’t iron out, there’s not much you can argue there. But, I wasn’t as nervous as I was for the Arnold, because I felt really good about some events. I’m like, ‘I know I can hang as long as I don’t make a stupid mistake.’ It’s truly an honor to get to compete with some of those guys. … I kind of felt like I belonged very quickly, especially after the log, like, ‘Hopefully I’m here to get to come back next year.”