Douglas Hepburn

:: 4/18/2017: Ajax, , USA
True grit no quit real legit

:: 11/16/2011: Josh Thurston, Vancouver BC, Canada
It's really nice to read something about Old Doug. I lived near Doug when he was in his warehouse near 4th and Main Street. Remember how Doug like to talk and did not like to be interrupted. But the funniest thing I ever did see was his mom ragging on him to clean up his shop - He who then plead with me to give her a ride home this was in the very early 90s. He was aways on about standing over head presses in a rack off of the safeties, I told him 'that only worked for short people like you' so he built me a special squat cage with the inside dimensions of eight feet as my finger tips can easily touch a 8 foot ceiling. I still have it today but I don't use to much anymore. I even have a pair of his signature 35lb Olympic plates from eons past and other stuff he made me. It's really to bad the City of Vancouver gave him the screw all those years ago. I still remember my father telling me about this Canadian strong man he saw in England back in the fifties, as my deal was watching Olympic lifting on our B&W TV back in the day. I actually met Doug just by happen-in-stance. Doug often told me what his ideal vision would have been for his gym. If you saw the Province news paper of December 10, 2000 page A-10, Sunday Special the guy with brown hair was me. Me and Doug use to watch reruns of old Soviet era hockey games sometimes back in his cave while feeding me curry vegetables of his hot plate in the back. He once saranaided a girl for me with that great voice of his - she said 'that was a first'. I still think she has a whole tape of him singing Any how, he sure is missed by me and his best friend Dennis the locksmith. Josh

:: 11/10/2010: Gioacchino Ricci, Rome , Italy
I just saw the press of Doug, it was nearly a pure strenght military press at 172.5 kg! Also Anderson cheated a little more, so his 185.5 press would be less with Hepburn style, or DH could approach 180kg if lifted more inclined. Back in 1955 other lifters could press not more than 165, i think, with the Anderson tecnique. The c&j lift by other athletes was around 195kg, this means that a press with modern style could be 190kg, From 165 to 190 means that Anderson could go from 185.5 to 213.5! And certainly P.A. could jerk 210 or even 220 kg if only he could clean them. So Yury Vlasov never really Broke P.A. press record with his 200kg with push and bent, It took Alexeev 15 years later....

:: 2/7/2008: arthur chidlovski, boston ma, usa
August 30, 1953 was the day when Doug Hepburn, 26, native of Vancouver, won the World title in Stockholm. He was the only Canadian entry, and he breake the world record for the press. His total 1,030.25 pounds (467 kilos), and brought him the title of World Strongest Man, a triumph for a guy who had to wear corrective footwear for a deformed foot, and who was teased cruelly as a kid because of his limping gait and his crossed eyes. Surgery fixed the eye problem, his prodigious discipline in training (he was totally self-taught) and his immense strength stopped the taunting. He was relatively small in the world of heavyweight weightlifters—only 5-09 (1.75 m) and weighed just 280 pounds (127 kg). A year later he won another gold at the British Empire and Commonwealth Games in Vancouver. Hepburn died November 22, 2000.

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