A great athlete, eight-time world champion and a real beauty, Sarah Bäckman, has made our headlines many times. Not only have we written about her numerous armwrestling successes, but also about other things as Sarah, like no other female armwrestler, has provided us with many various topics. Only Alexey Voevoda and John Brzenk have given us more  reasons to write about.

What’s particularly cool about Sarah is that she has done much to promote not only herself, but also our sport. Above all, she’s an athlete, not a celebrity.

Almost every competition ends with Sarah taking first place.

There was a time we began to fear that this Swedish beauty would give up armwrestling and start practising powerlifting as she posted a video from her training.

Do you remember that?

The armwrestling match Gabi Vasconcelos vs Sarah Backman is approaching!

Meanwhile both ladies are bench pressing and setting records!

Gabi – 102 kg, Sarah – 100 kg!

Did she mean to shock everyone by that?

Do you remember this short interview?

Sarah, why are you training so much legs, bench press and deadlifts when you’re an armwrestler?

Sarah replied:

I’ve been training armwrestling specific for 6 years and this year was my hardest one, prior to the World Championships in September 2012. Directly after the championship, I continued with hard armwrestling specific training and had two more tough competitions. The result was two overtrained and injured elbows, biceps and shoulders. I realized I needed a little break and the break is going on right now, but calm down, I’ll soon go into a more specific training for the Swedish Nationals in March, European Championships in May and World Championships in September.

Some time passed....

Sarah didn’t compete at the Swedish Nationals as she was busy in Japan promoting armwrestling in the Japanese TV. The Swedish federation decided not to include her into the national team for the European Championships 2013, which were held in Lithuania.

A heated discussion broke out about Sarah not representing Sweden. We published Sarah’s and the Swedish federation’s statements.

On 14 April 2013 we wrote:

The Swedish Armwrestling Federation would like to clarify a few points regarding the discussion over the last few days concerning Sarah Bäckman not representing Sweden in the European Championships this year.

Sarah is an amazing arm wrestler and fascinating personality. We are proud and glad that Sarah is Swedish, that she has grown and developed from a promising 14-year old starting out in arm wrestling to the super star she has become through her hard work and determination. Every year our national federations congress discuss how to appoint those who represent us internationally, and every year an overwhelming majority of the Swedish arm wrestling community vote that the right to represent Sweden is won at the table at the nationals. This year Sarah chose to forfeit that battle, and did not appear at the nationals, well aware of the rules agreed upon by the Swedish arm wrestling community. 230 other arm wrestlers spend time and money to fight for the honour to wear our colours internationally. Among them those who will be representing us in the ladies -70 category.

The Swedish federation will not disrespect those who have according to long standing, democratically decided rules, earned that right. When registering our team for the Europeans there was an opening in the -80 kilo category, that was offered to Sarah Bäckman. She has declined that offer, and consequently has no position on the Swedish national team this year. We can and will do no more.

Anders Axklo

President of Swedish Armwrestling Federation

A few weeks before, in February 2013, Sarah surprised everyone with her role in a TV show.

We wrote:

Called the “Blond Beast” (not a good name in my opinion) the famous Swedish champion has joined the cast of an extremely popular Swedish TV show “The Gladiators” to play “Spirit”. It is a kind of reality show, which draws well over a million viewers every week. It should be added that the Swedish population is 9.5 million people.

The news was first spotted by reliable Andrey Sharkov who in his commentary wrote:

This well-known champion does much to popularize our sport in the world. She has recently appeared in Japanese TV and armwrestled with athletes of other sports. Now she’s fighting in “The Gladiators” for the Swedish audience!

Thanks to the efforts of the champion Armwrestling will become more and more popular in Sweden. People will get to know that there exists such a sport. A large percentage of them will look for a club and will begin training. This year, at the Lithuanian EuroArm and Polish World Championships we won’t see it, but we can expect a significant increase in the level of Swedish armwrestling, which after all is high. Is Europe in danger of facing a flood of Swedish armwrestlers?  

We haven’t heard from Sarah since that time. Up until yesterday!

It turned out that Sarah is currently in the US getting ready for her first performance in WWE - World Wrestling Entertainment, which will take place on 18 August, at the Staples Center, Los Angeles.

SummerSlam is a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) event.

Is this the end of Backman’s armwrestling career?

This and a few other questions were answered by President of Swedish Armwrestling Federation, Anders Axklo.

Anders, how did you react to this news?

Anders Axklo: I was sad. We’ll miss Sarah. But, we’ll all keep our fingers crossed for her successes in this new sport. Sarah is fantastic and has done a lot for armwrestling, not only in Sweden. She’s a symbol of female armwrestling around the world and an ambassador of our sport in other countries.

Anders, you know Sarah well. Tell us frankly why she took on this new challenge?

Anders Axklo: Well, she’s only 22 years old! She’s achieved virtually everything an armwrestler can win. When you’re young, it’s sometimes hard to imagine that you’ll be doing the same thing for the rest of your life. For the time being, she’s the best female armwrestler. I think she wants to put herself to the test and feel a thrill.

Do you think she’ll come back to armwrestling?

Anders Axklo: Most athletes who had a break from armwresling would eventually return. Alexey Voyevoda is likely to come back to armwrestling. We’re all looking forward to his return. I hope Sarah will be successful in wrestling and will come back to the table.

For the time being we can support Sarah in wrestling. Good luck!