Beloved athlete, Olympian, strongman and TV personality Geoff Capes sadly passed away aged 75 on October 23rd 2024.
He was one of the UK’s finest-ever shotputters, twice winning gold at both the Commonwealth Games and the European Indoor Championships.
Capes was later twice crowned the World’s Strongest Man in 1983 and 1985, he was Europe’s strongest man in 1980, 1982 and 1984, and he was a six-time Highland Games world champion.
During his illustrious career he set more than 15 strength-related world records, too. The man was an absolute beast.
Originally from Holbeach, Lincolnshire and standing at six foot six, Capes was known as a living legend during his career through the 1970s and 80s, and he has left an incredible legacy behind him.
Having represented Great Britain at the 1972, 1976 and 1980 Olympic Games, Capes was once interviewed about the routine behind his Olympian frame, capability, and performance.
The recently-resurfaced archival footage of his interview with the BBC shows him training before he became a strongman, lifting plenty of heavy weights and eating an incredible amount of food.
His routine involved five hours of daily exercise, with a cumulative 120 tonnes of weight shifted per week – that’s the equivalent of 18 double-decker buses!
All that strength and muscle development required a huge amount of energy, with Capes regularly consuming as much as six times the amount of calories the average person would need each day.
His daily diet would include:
- 2.7kg of red meat
- 680g of cottage cheese
- 450g of butter
- One pack of cereal
- Two large loaves of bread
- A dozen eggs
- A large tin of beans
- Two tins of pilchards
- One pint of orange juice
- Seven pints of milk
Even back in the 70s and before all the inflation that’s happened since, all of that grub cost a pretty penny.
Despite having local butchers supporting him with free meat, and sponsors sending him free tins of food, he said in the 1976 interview that the red meat alone would cost £15 a week. Today, that equates to about £149.79.
After retiring from his strongman career, Capes became sought-after coach for budding athletes and would-be strongmen, and he was instrumental in guiding Adrian Smith to a fifth-placed finish in the 1990 World’s Strongest Man competition.
Despite being nothing short of gigantic and packing an incredible amount of power, the archival footage showed that Capes had a gentle nature too.
It begins with him stroking one of his budgies – along with being a champion strongman and Olympian, Capes was a famed budgerigar breeder. In 1995, he and his budgies even won a world championship together, and in 2008 he was appointed president of the Budgerigar Society.
Featured Image Credit: Evening Standard/Getty Images
Rachael Davis