The funny thing about Derek is that he is very modest. I trained alongside him and Wayne for a couple of years and although I knew they did well, I had no idea how good they were. Derek never talked about winning anything. It wasn't until I moved to Oz and told people who I had trained with that I discovered he was a multiple world champ.
In 2005 when I started powerlifting in Oz I was surprised how there seemed to be more division and rivalry here. I tried to promote people sharing ideas a little more- started posting up logs etc on a site I created
www.sfwplc.com this site is now closed as its not needed anymore.
One of the first things I did was organise a cross-tasman comp with no qualifying total- where any lifter could get involved and lift alongside legends. The first comp was hosted by Derek's club and ran at his gym in Napier. The comp is called the 'Bledisbro'. It has run every year since, although recently it has become a postal comp. It was amazing watching how generous Derek was with lifters, helping them out, encouraging them, running comps, bbqs, reffing, announcing.
Some insights into Derek, mostly from what I have seen or been told.
He was a monster raw. At his best he was squatting over 320 raw, benching around 240 and deadlifting over 350. He was known to start a sqat session with 200x10 front squat. He used to work out what time difference there was to the place where the worlds was being held- he would then train at the time he would be lifting there- so if that was 2am New Zealand time, thats when he trained.
He would use the worst bench, worst bar, heaviest plates- all so he knew he could handle whatever set up he faced.