Champ who gives a toss for future of Highland Games
SCOTLAND'S strongest man lives on top of a hill in the far south of Glasgow, in a room above his father's garage.
From this vantage point he can see across the Clyde Valley to where a dozen giant wind turbines ranged along a distant peak seem little bigger than a child's toys. A lot of things must look like that to Gregor Edmunds, who is six foot four, weighs stones, and has biceps the approximate size and density of Jimmy Krankie's head.
When I arrive at the house, Gregor is standing outside the garage, sanding down a telegraph pole. "I picked this up outside a snack bar in Clydebank," he booms, his voice gulch-deep and mulch-rich. He is 31, with an easy smile and vivid blue eyes lighting up his face. The telegraph pole is destined to become a caber used in the Highlander Challenge, an event he and his father are staging at Scone Palace on July 19 and 20, and which will be broadcast on Channel 4. The idea is that it's like a regular Highland Games, but with an added blend of violence, sexy dancing and Scottish history.
Gregor is the world caber-tossing champion – "Aye, on my day I can turn big sticks" – and has even conquered the so-called untossable caber of Crieff Highland Games which weighs more than 150 pounds and is more than 17 feet long.
"It's tossable," he says dismissively.
He shows me around the garage. This is where he trains, by lifting weights on a bench he welded himself. There's a lot of interesting kit in here – huge stones carved with Pictish symbols, cast-iron hammers shaped like lollipops – but my eye is drawn to a poster of a woman in a bikini and straw cowboy hat. She has signed it: "To Scotland's strongest man. Lots of love. Jalene." I ask Gregor whether he got this autograph in Texas when he competed in a Highland Games there last month. "No," he says, "that's the Big D Peanut Girl. Me and her opened a supermarket in the East End of Glasgow."
The photographer arrives and asks Gregor to change out of his trackie bottoms and into a kilt. He returns sporting the Morrison tartan. "The family's name is actually Morris," he explains, "but my father's father was done for bigamy and desertion and we had to change it to Edmunds." His grandfather, John Morris, a Fifer, was also part of a gang of fervent nationalists, including the poet Hugh MacDiarmid, which planned, without success, to steal the Stone of Destiny from Westminster Abbey. Morris was to be responsible for carrying the stone, and trained for this task by lifting a heavy steel ingot at his work at the Beardmore forge in Glasgow.
Strength is in Gregor Edmunds' blood. His great-grandfather, also called John Morris, used to fight for money in boxing booths. Meanwhile his father, Douglas Edmunds, was a well-known Highland Games competitor during the Seventies and Eighties; his autobiography was titled The World's Greatest Tosser.
At 64, Douglas is still massive. He joins us for the interview and reveals that he was a founder of The World's Strongest Man competition, which meant that Wee Gregor, back when he could be called such a thing without irony, grew up among the brawniest blokes of the day. Unhappy with the seeming inevitability of his path into strength athletics, Gregor rebelled and for his 10th birthday pleaded to be given a skateboard. He was given a shot putt and had to lump it. This gathered dust in the garage for a few years until Gregor started growing and fulfilling his genetic destiny. Aged 17, he began competing and was an instant success. In 2007 he was crowned World Highland Games Champion. He now spends each summer travelling around Scotland and beyond, taking on all-comers.
It can be a lonely life, though. These days the circuit is dominated by Americans. "There are no Scottish youngsters coming through at the moment, and the Games will die without them," says Gregor. "It's done as an amateur sport rather than a show. Most of the audience is tourists; quite often they turn up and there's some beer-bellied non-athlete throwing a small caber. And this is supposed to be the cream of Scotland?
"When I go over to America, I'm up against ex-Olympians, really good sportsmen, and here I might be competing against some guy standing about and smoking a cigarette who then has a throw against me. That's not pushing me and it's not going to bring people into the sport. If we can create something spectacular, though, the younger ones will aspire to that. It's like great footballers – everyone wants to wear their shirt. That's what we want to do with the Highlander Challenge. I'd love to be someone's hero."
I ask about women. If there is a problem encouraging young men to take up strength athletics, is it something that women can do? "Tell him about your big romance," says Douglas to his son. "Three years in Finland. I thought I'd got rid of you." Gregor looks reluctant. "That's not worth talking about. I lived in Finland with a girl who, at the time, was second in The World's Strongest Woman. She was in very good shape. I met her at the Killin Highland Games." This was Heini Koivuniemi, who can be seen on YouTube chucking a full keg of beer almost 12 feet into the air. She and Gregor lived far north of Helsinki and ate a lot of moose; they were more nosh and pecs than Posh and Becks, but the relationship ended and he is single once more.
Although Gregor is a world-class athlete, it's not possible to get rich tossing the caber. Sadly, this means Scotland will soon lose him; he plans to study strength and conditioning science in Twickenham in the hope of creating a future career. "I'm trying to get into equestrian massage," he says.
"A lecturer advised him to do it," Douglas explains. "You can make a lot of money because it's very difficult to do. You need big strong hands to massage a horse." "And," Gregor says with a laugh, "horses can't complain if you do a crap job."
Lineare Modus
