Doug Hepburn
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| Birth name | Douglas Ivan Hepburn | ||||||||||||||||||
| Born |
September 16, 1926 Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada |
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| Died | November 22, 2000 (aged 74) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Occupation | strongman, Olympic weightlifting, professional wrestling, | ||||||||||||||||||
| Height | 5 ft 8 1⁄2 in (1.74 m) | ||||||||||||||||||
| Weight | 300 lb (136 kg) active | ||||||||||||||||||
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Medal record
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Douglas Ivan Hepburn (September 16, 1926 – November 22, 2000) was a Canadian strongman and weightlifter. He won weightlifting gold medals in the 1953 World Weightlifting Championships as well as the 1954 British Empire Games in the heavyweight division. He is also known as the first man to bench press 400, 450, and 500 pounds (raw). During the 1950s he was publicly known as the "world's strongest man" for his many feats of strength. Hepburn has been inducted into the Canadian Olympic Hall of Fame (1953), Canada's Sports Hall of Fame (1955), and the B.C. Sports Hall of Fame (1966).
Born in Vancouver with a deformity to his right foot (club foot) and a vision distortion called (cross-eyes), Hepburn had to go through surgery multiple times during his childhood. He began lifting weights as a high school teen-ager at the Vancouver YMCA, and upon dropping out of school, tried to find work that he could balance with his lifting. Having escaped the Second World War because of his foot, he set about becoming the strongest man in the world.
Hepburn entered competition in 1948, and set an unofficial Canadian record (300 lbs. clean & press) at his first competition. He took the U.S. Open title in 1947, by pressing 345 lbs. Hepburn set another Canadian weightlifting record in 1950 and went on to win a gold medal at the 1953 World Weightlifting Championships in with a 1030 lbs Olympic 3-lift-total. After years of trying to attract public interest, the win in Stockholm had finally catapulted him into the media spotlight. During his preparations for the 1954 British Empire Games in his hometown of Vancouver, the whole city got behind him, and he was given $150 a week while training in a gym by then-mayor Fred Hume. At the Games, Hepburn would claim another weightlifting gold medal in the heavyweight division by lifting a total of 1040 lbs (370 lbs press - 300 lbs snatch - 370 lbs clean & jerk) to set a new Games record becoming a Canadian national hero. He was awarded the Lou Marsh Trophy in 1953 and was named British Columbia's Man of the Year for 1954.
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