He’s built like a Sherman tank and aiming to lift world title

Talking Sport with Stephen Glennon

There’s a line in one of the old war movies in which one soldier, referring to another, exclaims: ‘He’s built like a goddamn Sherman tank!’ It’s a quote that could easily be applied to Kilconnell native and power-lifter Dylan Murray.

No doubt, 20-year-old Murray, who was on the Galway Ted Webb Gaelic football team in 2009, cuts an impressive figure and when he says he plays centre-half back for St. Gabriels’, you have to feel a measure of pity for any centre-forward who lands in on top of him.

These days, though, Murray’s focus is as much on his weight-lifting as it is on his football – even more so given he is bound for the World Single Event Powerlifting Championships in Dusseldorf in Germany in June.

For Murray and his father and coach Ian, these are exciting times. Over the course of the interview, Ian produces pictures of his son playing with dumbbells when he was a toddler and regales with stories of Murray sitting on his back when Ian used to do press-ups as a younger man.

Both laugh at the pictures and anecdotes and you can sense this is a joint venture, one both are very much enjoying. Yet, while Dylan has grown up walking in his father’s footsteps, he is already establishing himself as his own man in the sport of powerlifting.

“I was always doing a bit of weights and stuff. I was always in the gym. I have been in the gym since I was 15. I was always mad on getting big – and muscles!” he laughs. “I try to watch what I eat and I wouldn’t drink or smoke.

“I was on holidays out in Spain last Summer and I met a lad called Tony Pierce. He told us about the IDFPA (Irish Drug Free Powerlifting Association) and he was wondering what I could lift and all that. So, I told him.”

Pierce would be no stranger to the sport, given he has won 16 national and 21 world titles and has set five world records in his 30-year career. At the age of 55, the Macroom man will also be competing in Germany.

In any event, Pierce’s encouragement inspired Murray and, upon his return, he began to gear his training towards the next IDFPA competition. “When I came home, I suppose I tried to up my strength there again.

“It is a different sort of training I would be doing for powerlifting because it is just one max rep – lifting your heaviest. So, it is slower training,” explains Murray.

He subsequently entered his first competition in Cork and took the gold medal in the 90kg Junior (U-23) grade. “There was a right group there at it and a lot of them had been there before and were members of clubs,” recalls Murray. “But I won the gold medal that day.”

For more, read this week’s Galway City Tribune.