Ed Coan is... ...The greatest powerlifter in the history of the sport. Incredible Ed is the powerlifting equivalent of Michael Jordan, Muhammad Ali, Babe Ruth, Richard Petty or Joe Montana. Coan is an all-time great, an immortal; easily the best ever at what he does. Coan has lifted more aggregate poundage in the three powerlifts then any man in history, regardless of bodyweight. In December 1998, Coan squatted 1003, benched pressed 578 and deadlifted 887 for a 2463-pound total. He weighed 237-pounds. Coan is a giant killer and powerlifting is the land of the giants. Super heavyweight powerlifters are the strongest identifiable group of men on the face of the earth: these athletes possess incredible size, thickness, girth, stature and strength - yet Ed Coan routinely out lifts these monsters and does so with astonishing ease. For an accurate frame of reference, imagine if the great Sugar Ray Leonard, as a 155-pound boxer, knocked out 220-pound Mike Tyson to win the heavyweight boxing title. Let us further stretch credulity and imagine that Sugar Ray would then whip the bejeezus out of every heavyweight contender that challenged him - for the next decade. Does that sound like an athletic version of a science fiction novel? A phantasmagoric fairy tale? Some ridiculous, fantasy island flight of fancy? Hardly: Coans degree of dominance in powerlifting is dead-on analogous to this outlandish boxing scenario. Ed Coan has gone where no powerlifter has gone before and done it despite a tremendous bodyweight disadvantage. To compound his greatness consider Coans longevity: he captured his first national championship in 1983, his first world title in 1984 and has not been defeated in a powerlifting competition in the intervening sixteen years! Ed dominates his sport as thoroughly as Joe Di Maggio or Jimmy Brown did in their respective realms of baseball and football. Coan captured world titles in four different weight classes and his reign of domination is unprecedented in both altitude and length. It appears in all likelihood that Ed will be able to maintain his rule far into the foreseeable future: after all, Coan is thirty-five and could conceivably lift another decade at or above his current stratospheric altitude. Powerlifters, like professional bodybuilders, actually peak in their forties. It is a very real (and frightening for his competition) possibility that Coan can rule far into the next millennium. He seems to get stronger as he grows older and assuming he can avoid injury, Coan can continue to rack up titles and records. Ed Coan began his world dominance first as a 181-pound lifter. He squatted and deadlifted 780-pounds and bench-pressed 485-pounds. He got bigger in his early twenties and as a 198-pounds lifter Ed Coan squatted and pulled 863-pounds while bench-pressing slightly over 500-pounds. He soared into the stratosphere as a 220-pound lifter, setting over seventy world records and becoming the lightest man to shatter the 2400 barrier. His longevity is unprecedented and his international dominance is to this day total and complete. The chasm between him and the rest of the field is so wide that he captures world titles with 200, 300, 400, even 500-pound margins of victory. This is a sport where a fifty-pound win is considered a wipeout. How much better then the rest of the world is Ed Coan? When he shattered the 2400-pound barrier, the second best 220-pound powerlifting total was 2102. Coan, mathematically, was 14.5% better then the next best powerlifter in the world. Imagine the hubbub that would occur if a sprinter reduced the existing world record in the 100-meter dash by 14.5%, chopping 1.43 seconds off the existing world record of 9.83, posting as incredible 8.40-second run. What if a high jumper increased the current world record of 711 by 14.5% and leapt over nine feet? How about if a 72-foot, world-record holding shot-putter tossed the 16-pound pill 82+ feet at the world championship? A long jumper would have to leap 33-feet to outdistance the rest of the world by 14.5%. Are you getting a feel for how good Ed Coan really is? Last December Coan exceeded the all-time powerlifting total with an historic 2463-total. He became the all-time greatest powerlifter in the history, blasting the total mark to smithereens. Any athlete that can exceed the legal lifts in legal fashion of hall-of-fame lifters like Bill Kaz Kazmaier (330-pounds) or the late, great, O.D. Wilson (420-pounds), deserve praise. Keep in mind that Kaz set his historic powerlifting total mark of 2425 way back in 1981. He broke 350-pound Don Rheinhouts 2420 mark, which has stood since 1975! Kaz broke Dons record, which stood for eight years, and O.D. totaled 2425 in 1988 to break Kazs record which itself had stood for seven years. Who finally exceeded the legitimate lifts (below parallel squats, single-ply bench shirt, and fully locked-out deadlifts) of the powerlifting Gods? Why, it was incredible Ed Coan in 1998. Ed weighed 100-200 pounds less then the immortals and this is almost beyond comprehension. If Ed, upon completing his final deadlift with 887, had spread his arms and commenced flying around the auditorium, powerlifters could not have been more shocked. Ed has been doing the impossible since the days when on Reagan was president, the Cold War still ran hot and Bill Gates was a just another geeky Harvard freshman.
Posted on: Mon, 12 May 2014 07:11:14 +0000
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