A different breed

With a lack of strong women competitions in Canada, a future career in the sport doesn’t seem likely, says a resident weightlifter.

Kaitlyn Pavlik, 20, participated along side other strong men and women at the Motors and Muscles competition outside Galaxy Lanes on Saturday. About 14 people participated in the competition and were divided into a women’s category and a men’s lightweight and heavyweight categories.

Pavlik lifted deadweights and flipped large tires against two other women for the title of strongest woman at the fundraising event. While not a career choice yet for Pavlik, she said she would like to see the number of women competing rise not just at Motors and Muscles but in other strongman competitions.

"There isn’t enough recognition for women," Pavlik said. "I do this for fun and I don’t want to be seriously competitive with it yet. I really love to come out and wish there were more women to make the sport a little bit bigger."

Pavlik said she loves the sport but didn’t a see it as a future career move because of lack of strong women competitions in Canada. She added there are a lot more competitions in America but the women are far more competitive than she is at this point.

When Pavlik hurt her knee in wrestling, she wanted to continue doing a sport that challenged her and decided to try being a strong woman, she said. Most of the competitions she enters involved flipping tires or moving logs and not many dead lifts, she said.

However, Pavlik trains about four times a week with other body builders such as Dallas Hogan. She said she used to be intimidated by the larger sized men but later found her small size often gave her a competitive edge.

"I like being a little bit smaller competing against men and women that are bigger because they don’t really look at me as competition," she said. "I like them to not really know who I am until I go and compete."

Dallas Hogan, a strongman, said Pavlik is part of a different breed of women who take the sport seriously and added she had real potential to go further if she wanted to.

"She’s pretty hardcore," Hogan said. "Around here it’s hard to find women interested in the sport."

Hogan said when he started training for strongman competitions there were no other local practitioners of the sport. However, over time he and a few others promoted the sport enough but most competition continue to take place in other cities such as Ottawa and Toronto, he said.

The biggest challenge has always been himself against the bar and trying to push himself to improve on his performance each time, he said.

"It is just about testing yourself," he said. :"I’ve always said I’d rather be the guy everyone is watching saying wow instead of the guy in the crowd saying look at him."

John Trevisanutto, organizer of the Motors and Muscles fundraiser, said they hoped to raise more than $40,000 this year for the Canadian Diabetes Association at the Thunder Bay office. He said that over the five years the event has raised a total of about $200,000.

Trevisanutto called this year a success and added the unique style of the event continued to draw in lots of people to see the athletes compete as well as the various motorcycles on display.

"It is a unique event," Trevisanutto said. "The thing that really makes us the money is the bike raffle. We sold out every year and this year we sold out a day early. We were pretty excited about that."

Results for the competition were not readily available.