When he’s not busy decapitating horses, chopping people in half, or crushing skulls with his bare hands as “The Mountain” on Game of Thrones, Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson spends his time training for the World’s Strongest Man competition, pushing his body to perform feats of physical strength that are just as impressive as what he does on screen—only significantly less grotesque and actually legal. On Sunday, years of hard work finally paid off when—after lifting, lugging, and hauling absurdly heavy shit all over the place for a day—the strongest man in Westeros was finally crowned the strongest man on Earth.
Björnsson beat out 29 other competitors in an array of batshit crazy events from the “giant log lift” to something called the “pillars of Hercules.” At one point, the 29-year-old was forced to deadlift an entire Jeep; a few hours later, he tugged a double decker bus down the road with a harness fixed to his behemoth, 400-pound frame.
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Björnsson has been gunning to win World’s Strongest Man since he first got involved with extreme weightlifting contests back in 2009. He’s spent the years since winning Europe’s Strongest Man, lifting more deadweight than anyone in history, and breaking a 1,000-year-old Icelandic record that has something to do with a very, very large log. But on Sunday, he finally won a new title, along with being arguably the most terrifying character on HBO’s flagship series.
“It’s my passion and my dream to become the world’s strongest man,” he told the New York Times in 2016. “I would like to win the World’s Strongest Man competition, as you would win best writer in the world. Is that a title that exists?”
If you want to watch Björnsson win a competition without having to literally rip anyone’s head off, you can tune into CBS when the competition airs June 10. Until then, please enjoy some of the Mountain’s best moments below:
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