Pushing tin

When Laurence Shahlaei attempts to pull an aeroplane - and we are not talking model aircraft - his driving force along the last five painful metres is his newborn daughter.

She must be one of the few kids who can grow up to say her daddy is truly the strongest man in the world.

The 26-year-old, who had just tugged an Air Malta Airbus A320, weighing 45,000kg, along 25 metres of runway, was motivated by the image of his baby's face when the pain in his legs reached an unbearable point.

"It makes me keep pushing as hard as I can," said the contestant in The World's Strongest Man competition, which is being held in Malta this week after a 10-year absence.

Mr Shahlaei, from the UK, was still panting a good 10 minutes after the ordeal, which left him inhaling oxygen from a tank to recover and having his worn, torn body massaged.

But a cold towel on his head and ice wrapped around his elbows in cling film - probably a whole roll, given their size - are not such a terrible outcome when considering the man had just pulled a plane, complete with 2,000kg of fuel.

And towing the plane was not even enough. The contestants were also being timed, so it was not only a question of reaching the finish line but also of speed. Harnessed to it, they pulled on a rope tied to a truck, which was anchored by a hand break... while the plane obviously was not.

"That would be pushing it," the contestant said. The rest had to be seen to be believed.

Mr Shahlaei, who has been training for four and a half years, is not even sure himself what the technique and physics behind the challenge is. After all, it is hard to understand how a man weighing 142kg pulls an object large enough to carry 180 passengers.

"I've done some truck pulls but this is a bit heavier," he panted. "As long as the surface is flat, it is possible... We're pulling with the rope and driving with the legs, so we're using every muscle in our body to try and get it going."

The end result is "jelly legs; you try to stand but you want to fall. It feels like they are going to explode".

The Airbus did not need a pilot to taxi along the airport's runway; just one strong man, without a licence to fly. But after the contest, it took off for Birmingham, a task only a pilot can accomplish.