Geoff Capes, two-time World’s Strongest Man, shot-put file holder and famend budgerigar breeder, has died aged 75, his household mentioned on Wednesday.
Capes left an indelible mark on British sport, birdkeeping and Nineteen Eighties common tradition.
Standing 197cm tall and weighing 170kg at his peak, Capes received the World’s Strongest Man titles in 1983 and 1985.
Recognized for feats of immense power, Capes was a family title in Britain within the Nineteen Eighties, admired for his capability to tear cellphone books and bend metal bars with ease.
Geoff Capes set quite a few information in strongman feats in his profession. (Getty Photographs: PA Photographs)
“The household of Geoffrey Capes want to announce his unhappy passing as we speak, twenty third October. Britain’s best shot-putter and twice World’s Strongest Man,” they mentioned in a press release.
Born in 1949 in Holbeach, Lincolnshire, Capes excelled in athletics, representing Britain in three Olympic Video games from 1972 to 1980.
His British file of 21.68 metres has stood for 44 years.
“British Athletics are saddened to listen to the information of former British shot-putter, Geoff Capes’s passing,” British Athletics mentioned in a press release.
Geoff Capes achieved a fifth-place end on the Moscow Video games of 1980. (Getty Photographs: PA Photographs/S&G)
“Our condolences exit to his household and associates presently.”
Tessa Sanderson, the Olympic javelin champion in 1984, informed the BBC Capes was a “nice individual and a large of an athlete”.
Though his finest Olympic end was fifth in 1980, he received two Commonwealth gold medals in 1974 and 1978 in addition to a haul of European medals.
Capes labored as a policeman and had the maybe unlikely passion of being a devoted budgerigar fanatic.
A world-class breeder, in 2008 Capes was appointed president of the Budgerigar Society and his experience noticed him often featured in specialist publications.
It was for his strongman exploits that Capes was finest recognized although, sustaining a robust presence in British popular culture, that includes in commercials, one through which he memorably rolled a automobile over along with his naked arms.
His TV appearances ranged from the kids’s present Blue Peter, the place he competed in opposition to fellow strongmen, to the quirky Nineteen Eighties collection Supergran.
Reuters/ABC
