A Prince George athlete has made history in becoming the first Canadian to ever be named the world’s strongest woman.
That title belongs to Tara Webber of X-Conditioning, winning the 2019 World Powerlifting Organization (WPO) Super Finals in Chicago this past week and setting two new best scores in the process.
According to Webber, the meet is the biggest equipment powerlifting competition on the planet and was even televised on ESPN.
“It feels pretty good,” she said to PrinceGeorgeMatters with a big smile on her face.
The 30-year-old beat out 13 other women to add ‘world’s strongest woman’ to her resume.
“I had hoped to win it one day, but didn’t think I was going to win this time. I was expecting to be like number four or five, but the top girl [in the Super Finals] didn’t get a bench press in. At that time, my husband [Mike] knew that I had a chance to win, so he coached me through that.”
To earn the prestigious honour, Webber had to be at the top of her game and she did just that by setting two new personal bests in the three difficulties.
The performance trainer squatted 727 pounds, 44 more than her previous best, which is also the fifth-heaviest amount of weight a woman has ever squatted in history.
Webber also deadlifted 529 pounds, 22 more than her personal best lift, and benched 335 pounds en route to the milestone moment championship belt (which weighs nine pounds itself).
“You need a big group of support to be able to do this and max out your strength,” she added while crediting her team and explaining it's common for female lifters to have an all-male training core.
“For me, it’s actually been good that I don’t have another woman to train with, so I’ve always just had to compare myself to the guys. So it’s always been, I guess, expected that I lift more and more, it’s not like there’s a girl that’s lifting 600 pounds and like, ‘I beat here, that’s good enough.’ Everyone is always kind of outlifting me, which helps me want to be better.”
The ‘world’s strongest woman’ title is a dream come true for Webber, who initially chose this career path based on her early childhood memories of proving how strong she was.
“I’ve always just wanted to know how much weight I could lift,” she said. “Even from the time I was a little kid, I wanted to be as strong as I could. I remember eating dinner and after each bite, my grandpa would tell me to give him a flex. He would say, ‘It looks a little bit bigger, take another bite.’”
Webber also claimed a cool $2,000 with the victory.
She gets to keep her title for the next five months, but will have to defend it come March when the WPO hosts the 2020 semi-finals in Columbus, Ohio.
The top 30 women in the world will pump iron at that meet in hopes of qualifying for the Super Finals this time next year.
