The tension in the Birmingham Arena is mounting; a world record is on the line. Half a dozen colossal men have spent the evening in the United Kingdom’s second city heaving one massive log after another over their heads to great cheers at the World Log Lift Challenge, one of the prime events for the kind of weightlifters known as strongmen. But now, the arena grows quiet as a 450-pound goliath known as Iron Biby approaches the final log — one weighing in at 509 pounds. With a gaze fixed on the middle distance, he squats low, hefting the log onto his thighs, before bracing into his feet and, in a gesture so light and fluid as to belie his size, rolling the log to his chest as he stands upright. “There’s the clean!” the announcer calls, excitement rising. Then, with a small hop and a massive heave, he presses the log over his head, squares his shoulders under it and, just as suddenly, drops it — before collapsing to the ground himself.
“There it is!” the announcer shouts as the crowd, ecstatic at the absolute feat of strength they’ve just witnessed, goes wild. On his knees, leaning on the log, Iron Biby has just been crowned the world’s strongest man for the fifth time. Behind him, fireworks explode, but he buries his head in his 28-inch biceps. How heavy must his emotions be that, for a few seconds, the strongest man in the world cannot lift his head? A man hands him the flag of his country, Burkina Faso, and he grabs it without hesitation, throwing his arms wide. Then he lifts his right hand — the hand Burkinabe use to greet, eat and caress — to deliver a military salute to the camera. Iron Biby has not only lifted 509 pounds; for a moment, he has lifted an entire nation — one embroiled in a complex battle with a jihadist insurgency — while fireworks erupt and 15,000 onlookers cheer.
Around 4,500 miles away, in Biby’s hometown of Bobo-Dioulasso in western Burkina Faso, a group of young folks have gathered in the sultry September heat to watch the event, which is running live on national television and radio for the first time. “He’s our idol,” one says of their compatriot. Before the meteoric rise of Iron Biby, who was born Cheick Ahmed al-Hassan Sanou, weightlifting was seen as a rogue sport, something you did in your backyard or a shoddy gym. But Biby’s dominance in the log lift on the Strongman World Tour has brought the sport into the mainstream in Burkina Faso and stoked an enthusiasm for the discipline among the nation’s youth, many of whom have gone to creative lengths to bulk up and get buff.
Behind a maroon metal gate in Sector 25 of Bobo-Dioulasso, several young men are working out with jury-rigged weights fashioned from cement blocks, rebar and chunks of scrap metal in a yard-turned-gym. Though the place is a bit haphazard, the focus is serious. Molly, a young medical student, ties his hair up in a metallic blue do-rag as he prepares to start his first set. “I style my hair before training and tie it up to keep it disciplined,” he says. “Discipline” is a key word for the young crew, who view Iron Biby as an exemplar.
“Before, lifting weights meant you were a troublemaker who wanted to fight, but for me, it’s a way to be disciplined,” Molly says, sitting on a bench preparing to lift a 65-pound barbell. Without the means to join a proper gym, Molly and his friends have taken over the yard of one of their family’s homes; in the background of all the heaving and lifting, an elderly couple sits on plastic chairs enjoying the breeze in the shade of a papaya tree. “They’re like our children,” says the man, watching the young men from afar, greeting each of them as they enter the yard.
About 10 minutes away by car is the Lasina Sanou VIP Sport Center, named after Iron Biby’s father. It is the first professional gym in the city and is where the five-time world champion prepared for his latest competition. Outside, a weathered sign with photos of Biby and his father sports the phrase, “Papa nous t’aimons” — “Daddy, we love you” — an endearing shoutout the mammoth man often gives to his father through the television screen after a particularly impressive performance.
Bachico Abdoul, Iron Biby’s current assistant, welcomes us to the space, which is divided into a weights gym on the ground level and a cardio room upstairs. “In these competitions, a kilo or an extra second is the result of a year’s work,” he explains. The training regime is focused, intense and dedicated as he seeks to maintain and surpass his record as the world champion. But Biby takes his role as a champion for his people equally seriously. “You know, my country is going through a lot of difficult things right now,” Biby said in an interview after setting the world record in 2023. “And as a sportsman for my country, it gives them hope. Hope is something we all need in our life.”
“People want to touch him and talk to him,” Abdoul says. And Biby obliges. One day, he stopped his pickup at a gas station in downtown Bobo-Dioulasso after he saw that a truck driver had spray-painted his face on the vehicle, under the slogan “Champion du monde.” The driver and artist had captured every detail, including the camo headband that Iron Biby wore during the Glasgow competition in 2023 — one that bore the initials VDP.
The Volunteers for the Defense of the Homeland (VDP) are local militias that President Ibrahim Traore armed to fight alongside the military against the jihadist insurgency that has plagued Burkina Faso over the last decade. The crisis is intense but often overlooked, as issues in nearby Niger or Mali take much of the focus of regional security. Since the fighting began in 2015, some 2 million Burkinabe have been internally displaced and many face acute food insecurity. In December 2022, 50,000 volunteers responded to Traore’s call to bolster military manpower. The local militias, who know the terrain well but lack military training, represented, for Biby and others, the coalface of the fight. In his postlift interview in Glasgow, Biby told the crowd, “If you see my headband, I put VDP — it’s for the soldiers who are dying for my country. So I did it for them.”
The same initials, VDP, appear on the sports shirt of Emmanuel Ouedraogo, 21, who trains at a gym in Ouagadougou’s Pissy neighborhood. “If champions like Biby and Bayala exist, I must train to continue their legacy,” he tells me, his earnest gaze and baby face a contrast to his sculpted physique. Ouedraogo, who goes by the nickname Wimbre (“Strong Arm” in Moore, the most spoken language in the country) isn’t training to be a log lifter, like Biby, but a bodybuilder — another sport of strength gaining traction in the country after the Burkinabe Thierry Bayala won the gold medal at the International Fitness and Bodybuilding Federation Pro World Championship in October.
While powerlifters focus on pure strength, often relying on thick, bulky bodies to support their efforts, bodybuilders work toward the kind of symmetry and perfectly sculpted — if highly improbable — physiques of Greek statuary and 1980s action heroes.
“My initial goal was to feel better and more attractive,” Wimbre admits. Now, his objective is to gain muscle mass, for which he trains up to five times a week with a coach known as Petit Piment (“Little Pepper”) who won gold at the 2023 Central African Bodybuilding Championship in Gabon and founded the Burkina Faso Bodybuilding and Fitness Association.
Petit Piment stumbled into the sport after a friend invited him to model for a TV commercial, but was soon enamored of the world of supercut pecs and bulging biceps, even if others were perplexed. In his early days in bodybuilding, he says, “People insulted us and said, ‘What’s with these guys posing in their underwear?’ But I thought the criticism meant we were doing something right.”
Petit Piment set out to create a gym and organize competitions to introduce the sport to other young fitness aficionados; no easy feat in a nation whose sports infrastructure is so feeble it cannot host its own national soccer team’s matches because it doesn’t have a stadium up to FIFA’s standards. But the lo-fi approach suited Piment, who insists on a similar tack for training. “I recommend working the body naturally,” he says. “It’s true that sometimes you see some impressive physiques and know they’ve used steroids, but when you learn about the side effects, all desire disappears.”
Anabolic steroids have plagued the world of bodybuilding since their introduction in the middle of the 20th century. In the early days of the sport, caffeine, alcohol and opioids were used to control caloric intake and help bodybuilders get cut, but once steroids hit the market, the sport was forever transformed. The era of the 1980s and ’90s was the heyday of the famous Mr. Olympia contest and saw the likes of Arnold Schwarzenegger and Lee Haney flexing muscles that looked like something out of a mannerist etching — grotesque, overwrought and pumped full of synthetic testosterone.
While the steroids jacked up muscle mass, they also ratcheted up aggressive outbursts, hostile mood changes, heart problems and sexual dysfunction.
Today in Burkina Faso, young bodybuilders say it’s not hard to find steroids — it’s affording them that is the challenge. Wilfred, a young man from Bobo-Dioulasso who quit bodybuilding to open a video game lounge, explains that when he was training he saw dealers who sold a synthetic steroid called Dianabol on social media. The temptation was there; on Dianabol you could “see results in just a few weeks,” Wilfred says, but at a few dollars a tablet, the price for the drug was unsustainable in a country where GDP is around $800 per capita and even getting enough protein requires creativity.
“I don’t consume chicken or fish because, you know, I work with what I can afford,” says Molly, who is hoping to add half an inch of bicep growth in the next six months. A tub of protein powder can cost around $45, an investment beyond the reach of most young students. Even buying a $5 chicken every day is too much of a stretch. Instead, he loads up on black-eyed peas and a secret weapon slurry: “To get protein, I make oat smoothies with a banana and a spoonful of cocoa powder,” he says. He stocks up on tubs of Quaker oats from the supermarket and shares his recipes on TikTok, where they’re a hit among African fitness influencers.
The obsession with calories and physique may be new in Burkina Faso, but the emphasis on sports is not. Thomas Sankara, Burkina Faso’s Pan-African Marxist leader, soldier and former president, who was assassinated in 1987, promoted mass fitness by reserving Thursdays from 4 p.m. onward as a dedicated time for sport for all workers. He was even known to interrupt meetings for a quick game of soccer out on the street. When the heat of the day dissipates, it isn’t uncommon to see people in major cities jogging, taking an aerobics class or weight training.
As the sun sets over Bobo-Dioulasso, solar-powered lights flicker on and the Throne of Iron gym, situated in an open field behind a housing complex on the city’s outskirts, comes to life. It’s a popular place, on many levels. The space itself is a bit shabby: There’s no vending machine, although the secretary brings a crate of hard-boiled eggs each night for postworkout protein, and most of the equipment is made of recycled materials sourced from the city’s mechanics. Truck pistons and massive tires serve as free weights and the machines are rigged together with bicycle chains. But sessions are cheap, about 50 cents each, making it a hot spot for young men and women who come by the dozens each evening to work out.
Ben Willis, the gym’s owner, says it took some time for the neighborhood to stop viewing him and his imposing physique with suspicion, but once they did, they began to see the benefits of bulking up.
“Iron Biby’s success has inspired many parents to see that it’s possible to be a champion, someone positive doing something good, and to see that a Black person can achieve this internationally,” Willis says. “It makes you want your child to do the same.”
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