a rare insight into the man behind the records as told by Marty Gallagher.
"Lee opened with 953 in the squat. He took the ponderous poundage down deep and three-quarters of the way erect he ran out of air and blacked out. He fell forward and the weight rolled over his head. He snapped his skull upward and cracked the back of his head on the bar. It knocked him unconscious and he fell backward. Lee had to be revived with smelling salts. He had bitten his tongue badly (nearly severing it) and his mouth filled with blood repeatedly. Asked if he wanted to quit, he said “No Fucking Way!” He repeated the 953 weight and absolutely smoked it. Way below parallel, he fired it to lockout like it weighed 135 pounds.
Lee was having trouble breathing and needed oxygen after this attempt. He suddenly began to bleed profusely from the nose: his cut tongue and nosebleed were so intense that he had to periodically take off the oxygen mask and turn it downward to drain the blood. He was a mess. His nose and mouth made it hard for him to get air and the two attempts had taxed his limited cardio system to the max. But he was determined to give 1,000 pounds a ride on his third and final attempt. I was backstage and watching this unfold, and had I been his coach I would have told him to pass on the 1000-pound squat attempt – way too many things were going wrong and his main competitor, Dave Waddington, had just “bombed out” – Dave had missed all three of his squats and was out of the competition. In order to become the national champion and secure a spot on the world championship team in November, all Lee needed to do was take a token bench press and deadlift. The only way he could screw this thing up was to take a crazy squat attempt on a bad day (like today) and incur some catastrophic injury and ruin everything. Taking a 1,000-pound squat at this juncture was crazy and reckless. So, naturally, Lee took it for a ride.
The 1,000 pounds was loaded as I made my way from backstage to the front of the auditorium to watch the attempt. I squatted down five feet behind the left referee and watched as the stout, gnomish-looking powerhouse chalked up and approached the barbell. He stepped under, stood erect, and stepped back to squat. The collar on the right-hand side came loose as Moran stepped back and took his left-right-left squat stance adjustment steps. The right hand collar fell to the floor followed immediately by a 25, a 45 and then in rapid-fire succession, three 100 pound plates. The fully loaded and secured 450 pounds on the left side of the barbell now fell towards the floor as the bar used Lee’s 23 inch neck as a fulcrum. Moran, with cat-like reflexes, had the presence of mind to leap rearward just as the 450-pound payload hit the floor. It would have crushed his left foot. The fulcrum catapult shot a gold 100-pound plate 20 feet into the air, like an iron Frisbee, towards the left side judge. Luckily everyone scrambled out of the way: the 45-pound bar whipped with such speed that had a spotter been hit with it, death would have been instantaneous – the flying 100-pound plate was a second death disc. It was incredible that no one was killed or seriously injured and that Moran didn’t have his left foot crushed. Meet announcer Tony Carpino intoned over the public address system, “WHAT THE FUCK JUST HAPPENED??!!”
It took a full ten minutes for the bedlam to die down. It was determined that Moran could have another shot at the attempt – if he was crazy enough to want one – which he was. Lee, being a Hell’s Angel with an unbelievable pain tolerance, shrugged it off. Despite being knocked unconscious and having nearly bit his tongue off on his 1st attempt, despite having a nose-bleed that would not stop and was making him dizzy and oxygen deprived, despite having crushed a 953 squat on his second attempt, despite having to chug oxygen in order to breathe, and despite having just survived a murderous wipeout with 1,000 pounds, Lee Moran roared out for a 4th attempt squat with 1,003.
He made a legal, legitimate, deep 1,003 pound squat.
He barely made it. I thought he was going to collapse again three-fourths of the way erect as he struggled to lock out the poundage. It was the triumph of will and tenacity over adversity, and the 4,000 people in the audience stood as one and gave him the ovation he deserved; it went on for a full five minutes and a Hollywood script writer could not have written a better “Rocky-like” saga – and had he written it, we would have dismissed it as too unbelievable to be taken seriously. In my mind, I knew Lee would have crushed 1000 on his second attempt had he not been knocked senseless on his opener – personally I feel he could have squatted 1,040 on this particular day, had he have had a curse-free day. Instead, Lee Moran had the most nightmarish competition imaginable and still squatted 1,000 pounds. Incredible. He went on to win the National Championships and the World Championships that November. He and Mark Chaillet roomed together – but that is a tale for another article.
I think back fondly of Lee Moran to this day: to my way of thinking Lee Moran was the epitome of the athletic rebel, the epitome of the rock-and-roll lifestyle; he was a pirate, an outlaw, and above all else a proud Hell’s Angel. He was one of the greatest squat/bench performers in history."
