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Neglect, rape and wrenching loss: can Rebecca Roberts survive it all to become the strongest woman in history? | Life and style | The Guardian

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She has battled all the odds to haul trucks, carry cars and hold up columns like an ancient god – and is currently the strongest woman in the UK, Europe and the world. Now she wants to take her extraordinary quest even further ... The gym where Rebecca Roberts trains is in an unremarkable industrial unit in St Helens, Merseyside. The room is small, the ceiling low, the music driving, the equipment incongruously large. There are the 115kg (253lb) logs she presses over her head and the atlas stones she heaves on to plinths. The heaviest stone she has lifted is 180kg. There are the frames she uses to practise hauling cars, whether a Ford Fiesta or her Honda CR-V. There are the barbells she loads with weights until they are heavy enough for her deadlifts. Her record is 300kg. Roberts, 29, stands just short of 6ft 4in (1.93 metres), in a black top and her trademark bright leggings, smiling beneath a poster of her standing 10 feet tall, smouldering triumphantly from the wall. When she first

Towering strength … Rebecca Roberts at the 2022 World’s Strongest Nation competition. Photograph: Courtesy of Rebecca Roberts View image in fullscreen Towering strength … Rebecca Roberts at the 2022 World’s Strongest Nation competition. Photograph: Courtesy of Rebecca Roberts Life and style This article is more than 1 year old Interview Neglect, rape and wrenching loss: can Rebecca Roberts survive it all to become the strongest woman in history? This article is more than 1 year old Kira Cochrane She has battled all the odds to haul trucks, carry cars and hold up columns like an ancient god – a

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