Geoff Capes passed away on Wednesday. To suggest he packed a lot into his 75 years would be an understatement, as gigantic as the man himself.
From setting a national record in shot put that has stood since 1980 to being twice crowned the world's strongest man, he already accomplished enough long before he was later awarded the title of best budgie breeder on the planet.
For those who watched sports in the 1970s and 1980s, or a prime-time broadcast of any kind, Capes achieved a level of fame far beyond today's British track and field athletes. Any child or adult who attempted to lift an object beyond their capabilities often received a familiar response: “Who do you think you are?” Geoff Capes?
He was a giant of a man who, in his prime, maintained his 6ft 5in, 26 stone frame on a daily diet of six pounds of red meat, a dozen eggs, two loaves of bread, two cans of sardines, a pound of butter and six liters of milk.
Towing that load he could still run 100m in 11.2 seconds at his top speed, but it was with his throwing arm that he first attracted attention, having grown up carrying sacks of potatoes on a farm in the Lincolnshire Fens as one of nine children.
Former British shot putter and strongman Geoff Capes has died at the age of 75.
Capes was a police officer for much of his athletics career and earned £9 a week at his day job.
He was twice crowned the strongest man in the world and achieved an impressive level of fame.
Capes, a police officer who earned £9 a week in his day job for much of his career, was a double gold medalist at each of the European Indoor Championships and Commonwealth Games, and his best distance of 21.68 m has had no problems in the years since. . If he had a single regret about his athletic career, it was that he never finished higher than fifth place at the Olympics.
That was at the 1980 Moscow Games, which happened to be the year he first participated in the world's strongest man competition.
He lifted, pushed and fought his way to third place before winning the title in 1983 and 1985, and Christmas television audiences of more than 15 million shot his profile skyward. As a less discussed fact, he remains the only man in history to win the Highland Video games world title six times.
Before long he was a ubiquitous presence on the small screen, with appearances ranging from Blankety Clean and Sooty Present to This Is Your Life and Tremendous Gran, in which he nearly caused a catastrophe when he threw a tree trunk and almost killed him. presenter. . In an advertisement of the time, for the VW Polo, he was seen lifting the car and tipping it onto its roof.
“There were stronger people and I met many of them on the Lincolnshire marshes,” Capes said. The Telegraph in an interview last year. 'It was about the application of force. Can you apply it at speed? Can you run 400 pounds? I basically did that on a farm as a kid with sacks of potatoes.
'When Strongman took over, everyone assumed you were taking drugs ()]but I stayed in the Highland Video games, which were put to the test. I was probably one of the most proven athletes who ever lived.
'I was at a disadvantage in The World's Strongest Man. I can tell you that. But I beat them in pure strength, speed, agility and coordination. It made me some money and took me to a lot of places. We were basically mates. It is a sport to a certain extent… but I am not sure that the Wada people will be able to overcome it.”
Cape's only regret in his athletic career was not finishing higher than fifth place at the Olympics.
The current family shares a joke with Geoff Capes while attending the Braemar Highland Games in Scotland. From left to right are: The Queen Mother, Queen Elizabeth II, Princess Diana, Prince Charles and Geoff Capes. September 4, 1982
Gudrun Ure as Supergran and Geoff Capes in the 80s children's show
In his later years, Capes focused on breeding parakeets, in which he won a world title.
In recent years, Capes had been showing the effects of a life spent bending bars and throwing trees with mobility issues. But his competitive nature had survived, although more recently he focused on budgie breeding, for which he once won a world title and in 2008 he was elected president of the Budgie Society of Great Britain.
“It's a great honor,” he told the Everyday Mail that year. 'I think the members voted for me because I believe in commitment, hard work and dedication. And I don't take any nonsense.'
The closing sentence may have caught the attention of a former school principal, whose cane was once stolen by Capes in an act of self-preservation. The same could be assumed of Team GB's leading delegation at the 1972 Olympics, after Capes liberated a box of whiskey bottles from his office.
He could be a troublemaker at times. At other times he simply lifted the world on those enormous shoulders.
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