Showing posts with label Marja Lehtonen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Marja Lehtonen. Show all posts

Friday, 5 April 2013

Sarah And Me: Jan Tana 2007

After winning her pro card in 2002, at the age of only 22, it took Sarah five hard years to reach her peak as a pro. There were promising results in 2005, when she finished 3rd in the IFBB Charlotte Pro behind Jitka Harazimova and Betty Pariso, and 4th in the New York Pro, with only Riveccio, Foster and Calo ahead of her.

But a year later at the Europa, she came in 13th, albeit in a very competitive field. I had so much going on in my life and so many distractions. I didn’t give it 100% and I know that. Then on top of that, I get there and everyone who I depended on to help me with the last minute touches like color, meals and even a ride from the airport just totally bailed on me last minute. That show was… forget it. I don’t even want to think about it, she said in an interview the following year.

Her next show was to be the 2007 Jan Tana. A chance to revive her fortunes and to qualify for the Miss Olympia for the first time, which she was desperate to do. She had trained as hard as ever, and the fact that the show was taking place on her birthday seemed to be a good omen.

In 2007, I couldn’t imagine what a live stream of a female bodybuilding show was, nor was I aware of the sort of play-by-play commentary you get these days on forums like Bodybuilding.com. But the Jan Tana that year was the first contest I remember ‘following’, anticipating the day, scouring the internet for news and for the results.

imagebam.com imagebam.com
imagebam.com imagebam.com

Sarah was in the best shape of her life, but, in a field of only four lightweights, she was up against two of the best: Dena Westerfield and Marja Lehtonen.

imagebam.com imagebam.com

While Sarah had struggled at the Europa in 2006, Dena Westerfield had been runner-up there, been to the Olympia, and had already finished 4th behind Mah-Ann Mendoza, Debbie Bramwell and Debi Laszewski at the 2007 Europa. Marja Lehtonen had been competing since the early ‘90s, was a Miss Olympia and Jan Tana veteran with years of top 3 finishes behind her.

imagebam.com imagebam.com
imagebam.com imagebam.com



imagebam.com imagebam.com
imagebam.com imagebam.com

So after a crowd-pleasing routine, had she done enough to win?



imagebam.com

She’d done more than enough. Sarah had won every round, and having beaten Dena and Marja, she also took the Overall title, defeating Heavyweight winner Stephanie Kessler. Sarah had won her first (and so far only, pro title).

imagebam.com imagebam.com

imagebam.com

My Muscle Queen had been crowned. Well, she’d got a tiara and a bunch of flowers. So, there it was, a female bodybuilding contest with the result I wanted. Little did I suspect what a rare occurrence that would be...

imagebam.com

Hope you have enjoyed my trip down memory lane with one of my very favourite female bodybuilders.

See Sarah on you tube
Purchase Sarah on Clips for Sale
Follow her on Tumblr
Treat her to something from her wishlist on Amazon

Saturday, 20 October 2012

Finn of the Day Extra

Here's the pic O Carteiro mentions in his comment:

imagebam.com

Nice. Thanks to  O Carteiro for reading and sharing.

Do you have a favourite pic of Marja? Please send it in and we'll publish it here.

Finn of the Day

imagebam.com

Female Muscle Slave’s recent tribute to the 1981 Miss Olympia Kike Elomaa left us with a bunch of images of fine Finnish female muscle lying around on the desktop as we searched for evidence of Kike’s influence on the sport in her country and beyond. For those of you who missed that post and can’t be bothered to read it now, we speculated that the fact that a country with only 5m people had nurtured so many well-known muscle women was due, at least in part, to Kike.

So this week, we’ll be strengthening our argument with some of the finest examples of muscular sexpots from the land we call Finland, and they call Suomi.

imagebam.com

We kick off with, for most fans, probably Finland’s number 1 of all time. The highest mountain in Finland in Halti, but its biggest and best bicep peaks undoubtedly belong to Marja Lehtonen.

Marvellous Marja was born in Tampere in 1968. Always interested in outdoor activities, she joined a sports club in 1983 and became a track athlete. Through training as a sprinter she discovered an interest in weightlifting. After two years of growing interest in bodybuilding, she decided to see if she could compete. And the rest, as they say, is history.

Monday, 2 April 2012

Express Yourself!

imagebam.com imagebam.com
What do these two pictures have in common? Why is it they appeal to me a little bit more than your average snap of a muscular beauty?

The answer is expression. On the left, the open mouth gives the impression that as she flexes she’s saying Yeah! That she loves showing off her muscles. On the right, Brandi’s pout makes me think that by flexing her delicious body for the camera, she is turning herself on. Both women know they’re hot, and by emoting even just a little bit, in their different ways, they are transmitting that to the viewer, ie. me. And that little bit of expression gives my imagination so much more to work with, and consequently elevates these pictures beyond the norm.

Slave loves a good picture of a muscular women, but loves a good picture of an emoting muscular woman even more. Hope you enjoy the examples I have chosen as much as I enjoyed choosing them!

The ‘Yeah!’
imagebam.com
Angelica Mielczarek seems to know the effect her body can have on a man. Wouldn’t you be wide-eyed and open-mouthed if you saw her? Her expression is like a mirror to the viewer/gawper. Wow! Look at her! becomes Wow! Look at me! Very sexy.

Most Muscular
imagebam.com imagebam.com
A most muscular pose without any expression is a wasted opportunity, but Lindsay Cope knows how to make the most of it. Yeah! she seems to be saying, Check me out! What muscle woman doesn’t love displaying the results of her hard work, and through her expression Lindsay puts over the self-confidence, vanity even, that Slave for one cannot resist in muscular females, especially ones who are as drop-dead gorgeous as Lindsay is.

The Roar
imagebam.com imagebam.com imagebam.com
When flexing those guns or finishing their set of 200 press-ups, the feeling just can’t be contained. It has to be let out. And so like mighty lionesses after a successful hunt, their feeling of strength and power is expressed in a mighty roar. Grrrrrrr! Roaaaar! The gym quakes. Knees go weak. Bunnies flee. She is the queen of her jungle.

Routine Emotion #1: Tonie Norman
imagebam.com imagebam.com
Some routines are more memorable than others, some women just have the natural ability to connect with the audience, and as far as I can tell, it’s the ones who are most expressive on stage that achieve this.

imagebam.com imagebam.com imagebam.com imagebam.com
Exhibit A: Tonie Norman. Not the biggest, not the most successful, but always a routine worth watching, because, like the routines of way back when, it’s always more of a performance with Tonie, and as these pictures and close-ups illustrate, she’s got a pretty wide variety of expressions to communicate with. I particularly like some expression with my abs and thigh pose, not an easy thing to do given the amount of strain involved, but Tonie pulls it off effortlessly. Again, open-mouthed and wide-eyed, like she’s shocked that she’s just made so many men in the audience grab their crotches all at once.

The Pout
imagebam.com
Nothing better than a big-lipped pout to communicate how sexy she feels posing for the camera, or how into her own body she is. Like Brandi at the top of the post, Gretchen Imes revels in her muscularity, or at least that’s what her pout says to this viewer.

Tongues
imagebam.com imagebam.com
Heather Foster sticks it out on stage (and incidentally shows incredible control of her lower lip in the process), while Kashma’s seems to be unusually long. Nice. She gets better and better, doesn’t she?

Routine Emotion #2: Elena Shportun
imagebam.com imagebam.com imagebam.com imagebam.com
These days, few female bodybuilders give their routine as much artistry and expression as was prevalent in the past. Think of Natalia Murnikovene, Diana Dennis, even Cory Everson. Nowadays, routines often seem to be just a collection of poses set to music, rather than a ‘performance’. But Elena Shportun keeps the flag flying for artistic bodybuilding routines, always giving an emotive, creative and consequently memorable turn. I reckon she would have made a great actress. In fact, she still might!

Homage
imagebam.com imagebam.com
On the left, Liang Yue Yan pays homage to her ancestors by terrifying any Mongolian invaders, while the lady on the right seems to be paying homage to Betty Pariso’s famous tongue-out most muscular.


Of course the one place where you can’t help expressing yourself (unless you aren’t doing it properly) is the gym. Larissa shows us a range of expressions as she punishes her sexy body.

First, an Ooooo
imagebam.com

Then, an Aaaah
imagebam.com

And lastly, a Grrrr
imagebam.com

Double Whammy
And finally, a couple of screenshots of Marja Lehtonen. Now don’t you think they would be so much blander without the expressions? In too many posing videos there isn’t enough eye contact with the viewer in my opinion. Often the ladies look slightly off camera as they take direction. Sometimes they even just stop posing and wait for the director to tell them what to do next. I hate this: it’s lazy on the part of the film-maker, who could just edit the bloody thing a bit, and the less eye contact I get, the sooner I tire of the clip.
imagebam.com
imagebam.com
No danger of either of these things here. Marja’s got you in her sights, gives you wide-eyed open-mouthed, then the roar. Double sexy!

Enjoy!