Lentorama 2023: It Happened on Holy Saturday

Day 32: Carry that weight

Pat Casey was born in 1939 in Los Angeles, and seemed to be heading towards juvenile delinquency until he wandered into Redpath's gym, where he discovered weightlifting. He began to spend all of his free time training, and quickly proved adept at powerlifting. By the age of 18 he'd done a 400 pound bench press, a mark only a dozen or so adult lifters had reached.

Casey was known for his marathon training sessions, easily spending up to six hours a day in the gym. He was also known for the voracious appetite that helped fuel those sessions, big meals washed down with up to six quarts of whole milk a day. He would top out at over six feet tall and 330 pounds, almost all of it upper body muscle.

All of this led up to Saturday, March 25, 1967, when Casey went where no lifter had gone before by cracking the 600 pound mark for the bench press by putting up 615 pounds. In his career he'd also record other firsts, such as the first 800 pound squat and the first 2000 pound three lift total (bench, squat, and deadlift).

Casey became a police officer after retiring from competitive lifting, and a private investigator after retiring from the police. He passed away in 2005 from cancer.