Step forward Hot and Hard 100 #4 Theresa Ivancik, who we find here competing at the IFBB North Americans in Pittsburgh just over a week before Penpraghai and Alina returned to the stage and Margie donned that fiery posing suit in Arizona.
Now in case you have been living on a remote island or something, Theresa has been a regular at the big amateur national shows since 2014. She has made almost getting your pro card something of an art form, managing to finish 2nd in her class (2015 NPC Nationals, 2016 NPC USAs) and miss out, or even, at the 2015 IFBB North Americans, winning her class but then losing out on the pro card in the overall posedown.
This year she brought her best package by far - and that's saying something. Tanned, beautiful, her best ever conditioning. She's spent time this year focusing on her legs, "turning a weakness into a strength" as she puts it, but she hasn't sacrificed any of that glorious size, that swoonworthy thickness that we all love in her upper body.
Problem was, Theresa was competing in the Physique division.
Last year, she'd also turned up in the Physique division at the North Americans as well as coming so close to the pro card in Bodybuilding. I'd assumed it had been a joke, a bit of a laugh at the judges' expense. This year though it was Physique only, Theresa - the Bodybuilder - against 17 Physique specialists in her class, more women than there were in the entire Bodybuilding division at the show. This was no joke.
Predictably, she didn't do great, although 8th out of 18 is no disgrace. Thinking I was a smidgen too big, Theresa told her Instagram followers afterwards. Oh really, Theresa, do you think?! Maybe it really was a joke. Watch out 2017, she warns, I'm not playing around anymore! But Theresa, darling, why are you playing around at all?
Not exactly business as usual on the stage for Theresa then, although very much the usual disappointment for her and her many supporters. What also didn't change was the customary consolation of many many pics of Theresa away from the show in contest shape, sizzling with muscle sexiness whether wearing more or less.
I especially like those ones on the bed. Damn!
Despite everything, Theresa celebrated her birthday right after the North Americans. She's 32 now, I believe, five years younger than Margie Martin, who didn't win her pro card until she was 34. So there's time yet for Theresa, for what she does she still qualifies as "young", and the chances are she hasn't reached her peak quite yet.
Her peak as a BODYBUILDER, that is.
Very brave of her to attempt to compete in physique. This is probably indicative of the crisis in bodybuilding. The gradual decimation of the bodybuilding category may face more into physique. The rub however is that as physique girls gradually get bigger, the original purpose of physique becomes null and void. I did hear talk of another division in between physique and bodybuilding, being proposed, but this is ridiculous in my view. In the same way that the IFBB were dragged kicking and screaming in the 90s to accepting the bigger women were starting to dominate the sport, they may have to do so again. As the man who subsequently became Bev Francis' husband, Steve Weinberger, put it in Pumping Iron 2 "The woman with the biggest muscles should win." The IFBB have fallen victim before to the conflict between what they think 'society' wants to seeand what the fans actually want to see and what the women want to achieve. Let's hope they do so again.
ReplyDelete