Rayno Nel of South Africa is the 2025 World’s Strongest Man (WSM). Nel entered as a WSM rookie and left with a legacy.
2025 World’s Strongest Man Podium
- Rayno Nel — 47 points
- Tom Stoltman — 46.5 points
- Mitchell Hooper — 43.5 points
[Stay Tuned: 2025 World’s Strongest Man Live Results & Leaderboard]
In hindsight, Nel’s journey to the history books isn’t surprising. He has been dominant in his short strongman career. Before his 2025 WSM appearance, he won five of six international contests he appeared in.
The narrative before and during the first two days of the 2025 WSM wasn’t about Nel. Instead, the attention was on the battle between Mitchell Hooper and Tom Stoltman, the only two WSM champions in the field. The aura of a foregone conclusion that Hooper or Stoltman would win the title permeated the competition.
Upon winning his group in the Qualifying Stage, even Tom’s older brother, Luke, said he was just excited to make the WSM Finals to support Tom winning his fourth WSM title. Luke, the reigning Britain’s Strongest Man champion and six-time WSM Finalist, was a participant in the competition, but he spoke as though he had no chance of challenging for the podium.
That energy persisted for much of the field, many of whom said during interviews throughout the Qualifying stage that their goal for the competition was simply to reach the WSM Finals, including Thomas Evans, Eddie Williams, Ondrej Fojtů, and Paddy Haynes.
Nel was not among them. He calmly won his Qualifying Stage group with relative ease, as did Hooper and Tom Stoltman, to rank third heading into the WSM Finals. Hooper and Tom Stoltman’s rankings above Nel further fueled the narrative that it was a Hooper-versus-Stoltman show and the rest was set dressing.
The narrative cracked somewhat when Nel won the KNAACK Carry & Hoist to tie Stoltman and Hooper atop the leaderboard. However, a tight battle between the two former WSM champions still maintained the limelight.
It wasn’t until the 18″ Max Deadlift, when Hooper and Stoltman tied for third with most of the field, that Nel rose above them on the leaderboard by a three-point margin. Suddenly, the strongman world was caught off guard by the force that had been in front of them the entire time.
When Hooper and Stoltman had disappointing Hercules Holds, Nel capitalized with a second-place finish behind the WSM record set by Williams. Nel took a seven-point lead over Hooper with two events left — a point differential so significant that it was nearly inconceivable to think of a timeline where Nel hadn’t already locked the WSM title.
That timeline apparently was the one we’re in, though, as Nel gave back most of his lead after missing the second lift in the Flintstone Press Max event. Hooper and Stoltman scored third and first-place points, respectively, to chop Nel’s lead down to just 2.5 with only the Atlas Stones remaining.
Suddenly, it became clear that the 2025 WSM story wasn’t Hooper versus Stoltman or the neglect of Nel storming the competition to claim the gold in his debut, but rather a triad clashing for position on the podium.
In the Atlas Stones, Hooper set a time of four stones in just over 31 seconds. That meant that Nel knew the time to beat, presuming Stoltman would win the event as always. Dramatically, Nel failed to load the fifth stone and had to wait for the judges to decide if he had become the first South African to win the WSM title.
Nel’s time of four stones in 30.17 seconds meant he beat Stoltman by a half-point to become the 2025 WSM champion.
Featured image courtesy of World’s Strongest Man/Rich Storry
