Two things that we really enjoy here at VinePair are Game of Thrones and beer. For those of you out there who don’t know about Game of Thrones, it’s an HBO television series adaptation of George R. R. Martin’s fantasy novel sequence, A Song of Ice and Fire. Alcohol is frequently consumed on the show, enabling us to cover the series quite frequently.
For those of you out there who don’t know what beer is, it’s delicious. Naturally, when these two topics cross paths in the news it catches our eye, and that is exactly what happened when Game of Thrones actor Hafthór Júlíus “Thor” Björnsson, who plays the role of The Mountain (a.k.a. the huge dude who protects Cersei Lannister), broke the world record for highest beer keg toss (male).
This all happened on the Guinness World Records Italian Show, in which every week two competitors challenge previously set world records. The concept is pretty basic, but world records can get pretty weird, and the beer keg toss challenge is no exception.
In this particular challenge, the native Icelandic Game of Thrones actor squared off against the 2014 World’s Strongest Man, Lithuanian Zydrunas Savickas. Both challengers had two attempts to throw a beer keg weighing a little over 27 pounds over a bar positioned 26 feet above them in the air. It’s kind of like the high jump in gymnastics, just the bar is much, much higher, and we’re tossing beer kegs over it rather than our bodies.
The Game of Thrones actor won the battle by launching the beer keg 26 feet, 4.93 inches into the air and over the bar, successfully breaking his previous record of 26 feet, 2.96 inches. Björnsson is looking to use this momentum to help him win the World’s Strongest Man competition in the near future. As for his future on Game of Thrones, well, we’re going to have to wait a while to find out since the series isn’t back on air for about a year.