ALBERTON – “You still have time left,” a timer reminded Stacy Legere as she started to walk away from the atlas stone.
Like five competitors before her, the Bloomfield resident had failed to raise the 175-pound stone up over the bar in the final event of the women’s fitness competition at the Prince County Exhibition on Thursday night.
Legere returned to the platform and, mustering all the strength she could find, she slowly raised the stone up, up and over the bar, sending her fellow competitors into a frenzy. None of them, though, could match Legere’s excitement as she jumped around the show ring and accepted a round of hugs.
The magnitude of that one lift would only settle in later. In a field of nine competitors, Legere finished third in the atlas stone event, earning seven points, rocketing her past defending-champion Shelley Ford-Lilly into third-place overall. Ford-Lilly, from Summerside, went into the event comfortably sitting third, but she was one of six competitors who failed to get the stone over the bar and they, therefore, all received zero points, enabling Legere to move up.
Overall champion
The overall champion of the women’s fitness competition was Samantha Belliveau, a 25-year-old St. Antoine, N.B native and Moncton resident. Belliveau won three of the four women’s events to capture 35 out of a possible 36 points.
She finished second to Melissa Arsenault of Wellington in the first event, the farmers walk.
Arsenault, who finished second to Belliveau in the tire flip and overhead axle press, went into the final event trailing Belliveau by a single point. She managed to push the stone over the bar three times to put herself in contention, but the New Brunswick 9-1-1 dispatcher proved to be a master of the stone, stopping after 10 successful flips.
The Alberton competition was Belliveau’s third strongwoman competition. She placed a half a point out off a podium finish at last year’s nationals, where she wrestled with a 220-pound atlas stone. She admitted the 175-pound stone in Alberton was easier to deal with.
Belliveau praised Arsenault for her strong performance.
“I love competing with her. I never did strongman with her before, but I did powerlifting with her,” she noted.
Acknowledging Belliveau’s strong performance overall, especially in the atlas stone event, Arsenault joked the New Brunswicker “should’ve started and showed us how to do it.”
Following a draw from a hat to determine the order of competition in the first event, the order of performance going forward is based on the results from the previous event. Thus Belliveau’s first-place performance in the axle press had her performing last in the atlas stone event.
This was Arsenault’s fourth strongwoman competition, and her first time trying to master the bulky stone.
