Email This   Larger Font      Print This   Smaller Font Advertisement   Lacy Okey’s better events are the pure strength tests such as the car deadlift, which she said is her favorite event.

Tuesday, May 13, 2008
By Paul Danzer Columbian Staff Writer

A few years back, Lacy Okey joined a gym, figuring it would do her good.

“I was feeling like crap,” she said. “I just wanted to feel better.”

At first, she could only move about 75 pounds of weight. But the Camas resident was not discouraged. Quite the opposite.

“The gym was almost like an addiction,” she said.

Soon, the gym wasn’t enough. “I got bored just lifting weights,” she said.

She’s bored no more.

On May 24 in Poland, the 34-year-old mother of two will be one of a dozen women participating in the World Strongwoman Championship. As an expected 15,000 spectators watch, she will walk as far as she can with 176 pounds in each hand, see how long she can hold up a 375-pound car, and toss a 28-pound weight over a high bar.

Those are three of the eight challenges that the competition will throw at the 12 invited athletes, four of them from the United States. The contest will unfold over about six hours in Tczew, Poland, the home town of multiple-time world champion Aneta Florczyk.

“It’s a lot of fun, flipping the (400-pound) tires, picking up cars,” Okey said.

Growing up in Battle Ground, Okey was not an athlete. “I was one of the most uncoordinated people you’ll ever meet,” she said.

That, she explained, is one reason strongwoman contests appeal to her.

Unlike the strict technique guidelines required to perform lifts in powerlifting competition, for example, strongwoman is about doing what it takes to lift or move extreme weight.

Though not an athlete, Okey said she’s always been competitive.

“I showed goats” as a youngster, she explained.

Chances are she did not do that in front of the 15,000 spectators that organizers predict will attend the world strongwomen championships in Poland.

Okey said she is not intimidated by the size of the audience. She has found that strongwomen competitors are supportive of each other — even in competition.

“You can have somebody competing against you in your class, and they’re right there pushing you to go higher,” Okey said.

Among the four Americans competing in Poland is Amy Wattles of Boise. Okey and Wattles met in 2004 when each entered her first strongwoman contest. Wattles and Okey became friends who occasionally train together and often communicate online, sharing training tips and encouragement.

“She’s been a valuable friend and resource,” Wattles said of Okey. “Just to have that female connection. We’re both mothers, both work, and we both do this unique sport.”

More than the unique events, the competition includes an uncertainty that adds to the drama.

“You can show up at the competition and the weight or the format can be different from show to show and might favor one athlete over another.”

For example, Wattles is good at the farmer’s carry, an event in which the women carry weights at their sides over a set distance. That is one of the weaker events for Okey, in part because of recent carpal tunnel surgery and plantar fascitis in her right foot.

Okey’s better events are the pure strength tests such as the car deadlift, which she said is her favorite event.

“You can use every muscle possible to get that thing to move,” Okey said. “I’m more of a max poundage lifter than I am a pick up the weight and move it lifter.”

Okey said she would be thrilled to finish above the middle of the pack in Poland, noting that most of the European women are paid athletes who train full time. James Alexander, a Vancouver resident who competes in strongman and is a training partner for Okey, said she has the determination and makeup to excel in a sport that can be intimidating.

“The attitude that she has is it’s never good enough, it’s never strong enough,” Alexander said. “She’s always striving to get stronger and faster.”

Over the last two years, Okey has won a Washington state competition, placed second in a competitive field in Idaho, and finished fourth among 13 in the West Coast Championships.

Now she is preparing to take on the world.

“I’ve heard I’m nuts,” she said. “I’ve heard all sorts of things.”