2008 Male Bencher of the Year

your kidding right?
cellis record was broken by burdette.
burdette also won wabdl worlds.
and burdette also did a multi ply
and benched 705.

Celli set the 198 and 220 USPF records this year. He also hit what was arguably the most impressive raw press of the year. In addition, he dominated at one of the premier raw meets, the Raw Unity Meet.

the 198 record was beaten by over 10 pounds by burdett.

Did Burdette do a full meet?

Why do you compare lifters from ipf to unclean lifters?

Hirvonen won the European champs (@ 242), the Worlds (@ 242) and the Nationals (@ 275)... He got my vote... IPF all the way

You don't think that people are able to look at the accomplishments of each compared to their respective peers.

Hirvonen is king! And he won the world, european, nordic and swedish championships the same year, he did brake a world record, he benched an inofficial world record of 350 kg, and he's all clean! He got my vote!

But you can look at how Hirvonen compared against other lifters under the same set of conditions and how Kennelly compared to lifters under his set of conditions. Then you can ask yourself if one of the two dominated there respective types of lifting to a greater degree.

It's likely that next year a single ply award will also be given.

Hirvonen won just about everything, beated records, dominated every competition, so did Kennelly as far as I know, so they are pretty even.

My vote goes for Hirvonen.
At swedish nationals he benched 305 kg in the first and only good lift.
Whats really impressive about it is his extreme weightloss the day of the contest.
He sat in the sauna for a realy long time and lost 8 kg, from 119 to 111kg going for 110.
The result of the big loss of fluid was a state of sickness. After the contest he went directly to the hospital with poor kidneyfunction.

I also saw hes 350kg lift at the regional championship wich was really easy.

Hirvis ftw.

My vote is also for Hirvonen. But it´s really hard to compare him and Kennelly since it´s basically two different worlds. However Hirvonen dominated the IPF even more than Kennelly dominated the Pro bench.

Hirvonen won Nationals, Nordic, European and World Championships and hit a world record in 2008. He also passed the drugtest on those occassions. He benched 771 @ 265 at a state meet which is the highest wilks points ever made in the history of the IPF. He did 10 meets in 2008 and won his class in everyone of those and didn´t bomb a single time.

the award is bencher of the year, not full meet lifter of the year.

Broken arm made sure of no full meet this year

562 votes for Marcus Hirvonen?

There isn't 562 people who read this forum who even know who Marcus Hirvonen is, let alone who voted for him.

The allowing of multiple anonymous votes in these polls has pretty much wrecked its results.

There was like 100 votes for Hirvonen and then fan boy voted 462 times as a way of expressing his man love.

I agree with Katterle, there seems to be some screwed up voting. Can the staff check on the voting by IP to see if they are legit?

This site have been linked from all the powerliftingforums in sweden.
Maybe thats the reason of hirvonens high number of votes.

Can you post up links to all of these Swedish powerlifting forums?

I'll be surprised if there's over 500 Swedish powerlifters who frequent Swedish based powerlifting forums and then who get inspired to each log on to this website and vote for their fellow Swedish bencher.

Powerlifting is way bigger in the USA than it is in Sweden (overall number of competitors) and it would take a post by Ed Coan, Bill Kazmaier, Louie Simmons, ect. or news of something incredible (i.e. someone deadlifts 1,000 pounds) just to get a forum post READ 562 times in the USA let alone to get 562 individual RESPONSES to vote in a poll.

It's 20 some lifters posting repeatedly. They're posting without being registered so they're able to post multiple times.

In the past two years, gross instances of multiple voting does not appear to have been an issue. It also doesn't appear to be at play in any of the other awards this year beside here. Unfortunately, there does appear to be a discrepancy in the voting for Hirvonen. A decision will have to be made on whether to adjust his votes because of that.

You're right about likely voter manipulation here but you're way off base about the number of times an article is read here at Powerlifting Watch.

Here are a few. And they're not asking the readers to vote for any lifter specifically, just mentioning that there's a vote here on powerliftingwatch.com

http://www.body.se
http://www.kolozzeum.com
http://pub44.bravenet.com/forum/show.php?usernum=3751415949&cpv=1
http://pub23.bravenet.com/forum/show.php?usernum=1924410946

Merry Christmas Seanzilla.

honestly, who is harvonen?
how many meets has ceklovsky done this year?
dolan?

Merry Christmas to you to Anonymous.

Bad looser can you not accept Hirvonen is more popular an Kennely?????

You can only vote ONE time from the same IP-number....

All you people thinking that the votes are manipulated, here in sweden not only the lifters have voted but also relatives, friends and so one that knows about powerlifting. That might explain the number of votes don't you think. And not only powelriftes vote, also olympic lifters and bodybuilders that use to hang on teh froums psoted above has also voted, and other people, that know about Hirvonen but6 doesn't compete themselves.

Here's one swedish website mentioning the poll:
http://www.body.se/content/profiler/artikel.asp?CID=2433

Marcus Hirvonen is a national hero in Sweden! He won the Worlds and the Europeans this yera and set WR's on the way.

Of course everybody wants to vote for him.

Hirvonen for president!

Here are two threads on another forum mentioning this poll.
http://kolozzeum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=123461
http://kolozzeum.com/forum/showthread.php?t=123514

Ok, first of all I want to make it perfectly clear that I have not been involved in any kind of cheating when it comes to voting. In fact I haven´t voted at all.

I do now for a fact that there are a large number of Swedes that have voted for me, I don´t know if they have done that because they think that I´m the best becher or if it is because they want a Swedish lifter to win. I think it´s a litte bit of both actually.

Not to brag or anything, but I´m quite famous in Sweden (in the powerliftingworld that is) and I don´t find it that remarkable that people vote for me. There are in fact a lot of powerlifters/benchers/bodybuilders/strongman/olympic lifters in Sweden that know me.

Over 500 votes may seem a lot, but we have over 50 lifters just in my club and I´m pretty sure that everyone of those have voted for me. There are over 100 different powerlifting clubs in Sweden although most of them aren´t that big.

Once again, I have nothing what so ever to do with the voting and If I would vote myself I would find it hard do decide who to vote on since I don´t see how you can compare IPF-lifters with lifters from other federations. Personally I think that it should be two different categories.

Sean Ketterle: I know that you think that your man Kennelly should have more votes than me, but there is no need for you to write that " There was like 100 votes for Hirvonen and then fan boy voted 462 times as a way of expressing his man love."
That´s just plain stupid. Even you can´t be so stupid that you believe that.

It's like the Eurovision song contest.Time to pull out the block vote.

Sean I'm liking the "man love"

Through passion,I gain strength

What about Mark Bell and his 826 bench? That was single ply and I think he was 308?? I would have given him my vote.

Frankl did the first 4X bodyweight bench. You all are fools.

Bell hit the lift after the list of nominees were released. It should be on the list though. Although late, it's been added.

Marcus & Others-

Thank you very much for helping us understand the voting patterns.

Congratulations on a great year and likely being the recipient of the 2008 Bencher of the Year award!

What about Richie Briggs?

Hey Marcus... Congratulations on your great benching big man!