Life
Donna Moore is one of the world’s most decorated strongwomen and is a three-time World’s Strongest Woman. Living in Colburn, North Yorkshire, she has been competing in strongwoman since 2012 and has amassed a great number of contest victories, including British, European, World and Arnold Strongman titles.
The “Queen of the Stones,” as she is acknowledged by competitors and fans, due to her prestigious stone lifting ability, has established numerous world records in various forms of the event, as well as in dumbbell pressing. She works in NHS community nursing and is a mother of two.
Donna is not a full-time athlete and needs to fit training in around her hectic work life and children, which is the sport’s biggest challenge for her. She performs much of her training at home, outdoors, in all weather conditions, including rain, wind and snow!
Career
Donna’s first experience in the gym was taking part in “body Pump” classes at her local gym, which she did purely for health reasons after having her children. She got into strongwoman by accident after being invited to compete in Scotland by a friend via Facebook, having seen women competing on TV. She began competing in 2012 and admits that initially, she was out of her depth, but quickly began to improve.
In 2013 she took part in the Strongwoman World Championships, in Helsinki, Finland, placing 7th behind the winner Kati Luoto (FIN). In 2015 she competed in her first Arnold Strongwoman World Championships, taking 5th, but she returned victorious the following year to claim her first major title. Since then, Donna has won a plethora of major titles, including another Arnold victory and three World’s Strongest Woman gold medals.
In 2019, Donna established a world record for lifting seven of The Ardblair Stones at the Blairgowrie & Rattray Highland Games. In 37.14 seconds, she lifted seven stones ranging in weight from 18kg/40lb, to 118kg/260lb.
The following year she set another world record for lifting the heaviest single Atlas Stone over a 48-inch bar – 171.3kg/378lb, at the “Feats of Strength” online series of world record attempts. Donna also set the world record for the Monster Dumbbell, lifting an 81.65kg/180lb dumbbell at the Rogue Record Breakers event in Columbus, Ohio, in 2020.
In recent years Donna has moved down to the U82kg weight division and in 2022 she returned to World’s Strongest Woman to place 3rd. In 2023 she competed at the Arnold Classic in the open division, despite her lighter bodyweight, placing 6th.
Best Title
Donna has captured the Worlds’ Strongest Woman crown, the sport’s greatest accolade, on three occasions. She won her first title in 2016, on home soil, in Doncaster, defeating Ukraine’s Lidia Hunko and Olga Liashchuk.
She retained the title in 2017, in Raleigh, North Carolina, where she defeated Kristin Rhodes (USA) by two points. Donna claimed her third title in 2019, in Daytona Beach, Florida, where she beat America’s Victoria Long by 2 points.
Competition Results
Best Lifts
Competition Lifts
Present Day
Donna will next be competing at Britain’s Strongest Woman in Doncaster on September 30th. As part of the Weekend of Strength double header, it will be the first time Giants Live has featured a female only contest. Although she has moved down to the U82kg weight division, Donna will be competing in the Open division, as she has done in her last Arnold Classic appearances.
Donna will also be representing Team UK at the Giants Live World Strongest Nation contest, where male and female teams from the UK will be taking on Team USA on 8th November 2023 at Liverpool’s M&S Bank Arena.
Media
Donna is the subject of a documentary titled Don Don Strong that charts her training and competition throughout 2021, as well as looking at her stellar career and examining some of the attitudes towards female strength competitors. The film won an award for sports documentaries at the Cannes Film Festival.
Donna has featured on the Giants Live Strongman Podcast: “A life outside of Strongman is the biggest challenge!” Many of her contest performances are available to view on YouTube and she has been profiled by several channels. Along with fellow British World’s Strongest Woman winners Rebecca Roberts and Andrea Thompson, Donna features in a Guardian article detailing their involvement in the sport and the growing profile of the female competitors.
Donna can be found on Instagram under the handle @donna_moore_strongwoman, where she has 52.1k followers. Her fans get to see her training outdoors at her home, in the wintertime, ankle deep in snow! She is also on Facebook, as Donna Moore.
