Apollon

21 February 1862 – October 1928 · Marsillargues, Hérault → Évreux

Louis Uni, who performed as Apollon, was the most physically imposing of the French music-hall strongmen of the late nineteenth century. He left no training book and relatively few well-documented lifting records, but his name is attached to an implement: a thick-handled bar fitted with a pair of railway-carriage wheels, which became one of the iron game's most enduring tests.

At a glance

• Born 21 February 1862 at Marsillargues (Hérault); died at Évreux in October 1928 (the French death record gives the 19th; English-language sources often give the 18th).
• Height and weight as reported: about 1.88–1.90 m (6 ft 2 in–6 ft 3 in) and 118–120 kg (260–265 lb) in his prime.
• Best-known implement: Apollon's Wheels, about 166 kg (366 lb), on an axle roughly 49 mm (1.93 in) thick.

Origins

Uni was born in Marsillargues, a small commune in the Hérault, the son of Jean-Jacques Uni, a farmer, and Elisabeth Brémond, in a family known locally for its tall men. At fourteen he ran away to join a travelling Italian circus at nearby Lunel and was brought home by the police. He was later allowed to leave home to work with travelling strongmen and wrestlers, and completed his military service at about twenty.

The work

Apollon is recorded at the Folies Bergère in Paris from about 1887, and appeared at the Royal Aquarium in London in December 1889. His best-known stage entrance, "the escaping prisoner", had him bend apart the bars of a cage and step through. He also wrestled in the Greco-Roman style, and for a time ran his own Paris venue, the Concert Apollon, which he eventually gave up at a considerable loss. He was a friend of Edmond Desbonnet, the French physical-culture promoter whose writings are the main source for his career.

Notable feats

The figures attached to Apollon himself, as distinct from his wheels, come almost entirely from Desbonnet:

• A clean and jerk of a 155 kg (342 lb) double-globe barbell at the Théâtre des Variétés in Lille on 18 December 1892, after which he is said to have balanced the bar on one hand.
• In 1889 at Lille, lifting a set of railway-carriage wheels on a thick axle that the strongman Batta (Charles Estienne) could take only to his chest.
• Contemporary Bordeaux publicity of 1889 credited him with raising an 80 kg weight between two fingers.

The implement now known as Apollon's Wheels — two railway-carriage wheels about 26 in across, fixed to an axle of about 49 mm (1.93 in) that does not revolve, with a total weight of about 166 kg (366 lb) — is usually dated to the early 1890s. Despite the popular story, there is no reliable evidence that Uni himself ever cleaned and jerked it; some French accounts claim he did, but the claim was disputed by Jean Dame, Rigoulot's manager.

Compared with Saxon, Cyr, or Hackenschmidt, his measurable record is thin. The implement is the record.

Later life

In 1913, at a performance in Vichy, Uni was badly injured while trying to hold back two motor cars with his arms. He continued to appear in travelling shows into his sixties, and played the part of Triton in Rex Ingram's silent film Mare Nostrum (1926). He died at his home in Évreux in October 1928, aged sixty-six.

Legacy

Apollon's Wheels are the legacy. Charles Rigoulot, the French Olympic champion, is generally credited as the first man to clean and jerk them, in Paris in 1930; John Davis did so in Paris in 1949 and Norbert Schemansky in Lille in 1954. From 2002 a replica was used at the Arnold Strongman Classic, where Mark Henry, Žydrūnas Savickas and others lifted it overhead. The original implement is exhibited at the Musée National du Sport in Nice. The thick-bar training implements sold as "Apollon's Axle" today are named after it.

Disputed and unresolved

Apollon's exact bodyweight, height and stage figures vary between sources; the ranges above are those most commonly given, and later English-language popular accounts sometimes make him taller and heavier still. His dates are also given inconsistently: the birth is sometimes misdated to January, and the death is given as either 18 or 19 October 1928. The claim that he cleaned and pressed or jerked his wheels overhead has no firm contemporary basis.