The Mountain is the strongest man on “Game of Thrones.” Now he is the strongest man in the real world as well.

Hafthor Julius Bjornsson took a break from playing Gregor Clegane, the brutal warrior known as the Mountain, and won the long-running World’s Strongest Man competition Sunday in the Philippines.

Bjornsson, 29, has been a regular in the competition and had three second- and three third-place finishes over the years, but he had never previously won.

“It’s my passion and my dream to become the world’s strongest man,” he said in a 2016 profile in which he shared his workout secrets with The New York Times. “I would like to win the World’s Strongest Man competition, as you would win best writer in the world. Is that a title that exists?”

Bjornsson certainly qualifies as a figurative Mountain. He checks in at 6 feet 9 inches and 400 pounds. But he is far from the merciless monster he depicts on television. A scene in which he crushed a foe’s skull with his bare hands “actually made my heart hurt,” he said in 2014.

The World’s Strongest competition will be shown in the United States on CBS beginning in June.

— New York Times News Service