Strongmen and women.

Weightlifters gather at event to remember fallen competitor

Jon Meyerjmeyer@idahopress.com

Saturday, October 6th, 2007

NAMPA — Local men and women lifted hearts and spirits — not to mention a whole lot of iron — during what could have become a somber Saturday afternoon during a tribute competition in memory of fallen Northwest Strongman legend Jesse Marunde.

Emotions ran high, almost equaling the energy in the air. Weight plates clanged together. Cars were hoisted off the ground. Money rolled in. It was a fitting fundraiser for the world-class level Strongman, who died suddenly in July from complications related to a defective heart valve.

“He’d really have liked this,” Marunde’s wife, Callie Marunde, said while holding the pairs’ daughter Jessica Joy, now almost four moths old. “He loved these things, this was our life.”

Callie Marunde is a competitor on par with her husband, a two-time national lightweight women’s champion and national record-holder in Strongman events. Before his death, Jesse was the youngest American to ever qualify for the World’s Strongest Man contest, competing in 2001, 2002, 2003 and 2005 in the nationally-televised event.

“Jesse was an amazing guy. Lots of the people in the valley were his friends and he trained with a lot of the guys here,” Jay Hagadorn, owner of Nampa’s Genesis Fitness and the promoter of the event, said. “We’d love to send his wife and family home with a good blessing.”

Jesse had originally planned to organize the North American Strongman Society sanctioned event with Hagadorn as the first in the Nampa area. When he died from a genetic heart defect, the promotion developed a second purpose and evolved into something more, a fundraiser for the family he left behind.Amateur and professional Strongman competitors alike turned out from all over the country to compete in the men’s heavyweight and lightweight, women’s open and teen divisions at the Nampa event.

Several of Marunde’s training partners came all the way from the Sequim and Port Angeles area of western Washington where he hailed from to show their support and contribute to helping the family.In addition to the entry fees raised by the competitors, the eye-catching events such as the car squat, in which competitors lifted the rear end of a KIA Rio — and sometimes chose to add even more weight — drew many into the crowd to participate in the raffle and silent auction as well.

All of the proceeds went to benefit the Marunde family.“He’d think all of this was great; (he) told us to all go out and smash it out,” Marshall White, one of Marunde’s friends and former partners said after deadlifting a whopping 900 pounds 18 inches off a stand. “The dedication to him brought a lot of us out.”

Several world records were nearly broken in the Genesis parking lot Saturday as weight belts strained during the three other events: the maximum atlas stone lift, the maximum 12-inch overhead log press and the farmer’s walk for maximum distance.

The weights involved in the car squat and farmer’s walk — in which lifters carry an I-beam loaded with weights in each hand as far as they can before letting them drop — were so extreme that the apparatus had to be designed by Nampa’s Double R Trailer company. It took three to four people to lift the squat bar back to the starting position after each competitor was finished.

In the end though, for the crowd, Saturday’s event wasn’t just about the personal records or the national qualifying, it was about remembering a fellow competitor who had touched many lives.

“Jesse was a super nice guy. He always came to the competitions to root us on,” said Amy Wattles, 34, a competitor of Callie Marunde’s in the women’s open class. “I can’t imagine a better day.”