Merseyside's Strongest Man has shared his dream of making the world of powerlifting a more inclusive place to be.
Vinny Jones, 40, hopes to promote more LGBT+ inclusion in sport by organising gender neutral powerlifting competitions, in which competitors are judged on a combination of strength, power, speed and endurance, regardless of gender.
He said: "Powerlifting is still quite a macho environment and homophobia is still there. There's still this latent idea that it's a very masculine, male sport, but anybody can do it. It's taking time for that message to get through, but it is one that is starting to take effect."
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Vinny, who owns the Old Time Strength Gym in Wallasey, found his passion for powerlifting in 2012 when he was struggling with both his mental and physical health. Within a year, he dropped from 25st to 17st, and won the novice category for England's Most Powerful Man in 2013.
He later went on to become the two-time winner of the North Wales and Cheshire's Strongest Man competition in 2018 and 19, won second place in North West's Strongest Man in 2019, and is currently the proud holder of the title of Merseyside's Strongest Man.
After struggling to find the confidence to break into the intense world of strongman training due to his bisexuality, the dad-of-three now hopes to make the sport more welcoming to other LGBT+ people by challenging the hyper-masculine stereotypes associated with it.
He said: "I always struggled with my sexuality throughout my entire life, and the idea of going into a gym with other guys always put me off. I thought it was a very macho environment. I didn't start going to the gym until I was 30, and I wished I had someone to guide me through it.
"When I set my own gym up in 2017, I wanted to create an environment where anyone could go. We don't have any mirrors; we're keen to promote powerlifting as an activity for physical and mental health, not necessarily trying to look a certain way.
"We ran our first gender-neutral competition two years ago. Normally there are two seperate binary categories for men and women. We decided that, with everybody competing, it would be based on ability only. We ranked everybody based on the reps they did, the weights they did. In some categories you found the women were beating the guys, and we had some transgender athletes who also took part. It was a really fair and fun way of doing a competition."
But the battle of strength, which was also open to disabled competitors, was condemned by some critics, and Vinny said he received homophobic abuse online as a result.
He said: "Quite a few people were not happy with the idea of a gender neutral competition, but we decided to go ahead with it anyway and it was very successful and everyone had a great time.
"At the moment, nobody is putting on gender neutral competitions because there's not many openly LGBT+ people within the sport. I don't know if it's down to the stereotypes about masculinity or a lack of support, but there's very little representation. We've only got a small membership - there's only about 20 of us - but when you're already dealing with a niche sport, it's hard enough attracting anyone, let alone people who fear they might not fit in. That's why we want to get the message across that actually, you can do this.
"It's OK to be completely different, it's OK to have things about you that others might not accept, you don't have to worry about gossip or people demeaning you in any way.
"These are not just competitions for big, burly men. Putting on more gender neutral competitions specifically is one of my big aims for the next five years, and I hope it will be an instigator for change. Because right now, a lot of people don't think we exist."
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