Photo: U.S. Air Force photo by Senior Airman Haiden Morris via Wikimedia Commons, public domain.
The all-vegan Vegan Strong PlantBuilt team has won 18 medals at the Mr. America All-American Sports Festival in Atlantic City, across bodybuilding, powerlifting, kettlebell sport and CrossFit.
The team competed from Friday, October 7 to Sunday, October 9, Forks Over Knives reports.
Australian Noah Hannibal set an Australian masters bench press record with 182.5 kg (402lb) to win the 125 kg Men's Masters Bench Only Raw. Americans Nick Squires and Ndem Nkem won their 100 kg and 140 kg Men's Open Raw powerlifting classes. In kettlebell sport, Scott Green won both the five-minute long cycle and the five-minute snatch, and Kelly Green won the snatch too.
Sally Anderson won the women's masters CrossFit division, Nadege Corcoran won both the Women's Bikini Open and Masters, and team co-founder Giacomo Marchese took bronze in both the Men's Bodybuilding Open and Masters.
The team's mission is to kill off the idea that vegans are weak. Marchese says the diet is the reason he can train so hard (VegNews also spoke to the team before the event):
Strength comes from being able to perform, recover, and train consistently. When I went vegan 18 years ago, my recovery time improved. Even when I'm deep in competition prep for my next bodybuilding season, I can easily train upward of seven days in a row while still recovering well.
Vegan lifters have been piling up medals for years. In 2017 vegan athletes set world records and won a huge medal haul, two vegans took first place at the WABBA Amateur Grand Prix, and Hulda Waage set an Icelandic powerlifting total record in 2018.
The 'weak vegan' stereotype just took another 18 hits.