Olympia 2014 Review: The Winners

It wasn't just Iris Kyle who repeated her 2013 victory. I kind of wish I'd done a post with all five of the Olympia winners last year because if I had, I could have largely done a simple cut and paste job this time around! But although three of the winners across the five divisions were the same as last year, two women, neither of them American, were winning Olympia titles for the first time. Here they all are...


BIKINI: ASHLEY KALTWASSWER (USA)


left to right: Yeshaira Robles (4th), India Paulino (6th), Janey Layug (2nd), Ashley Kaltwasser, Stacey Alexander (3rd), Amanda Latona (5th).

A former school and college athlete in her native Ohio, Ashley was inspired to compete by her former high school track coach, who had been a figure competitor. She is trained by Summer Montabone, who was herself a former fitness competitor.




She's two for two at the Olympia, making the 25-year-old Ashley the first woman to take the Bikini Olympia title twice. This was her fifth competition of the year, and her fourth win - she finished 2nd in New York (to Yeshaira Robles).



Ashley says: It totally makes my day when someone lets me know that I inspire them. It makes all of the hard work so worth while! I enjoy being an ambassador for the sport. 2x Bikini Olympia Champion... I like the sound of that!


FIGURE: NICOLE WILKINS (USA)


left to right: Gennifer Strobo (6th), Ann Titone (4th), Candice Keene (2nd), Nicole Wilkins, Candice Lewis (3rd), Latorya Watts (5th).

An inspiration to FMS' favourite "Normal Person", Emily Chorley, it's our pleasure to feature Nicole here, the champ in a division that, quite honestly, I don't usually pay that much attention to. Given my surprise at the amount of muscle Nicole and many of her fellow competitors displayed on stage in Vegas, that may be about to change!




This was Nicole's fourth Figure Olympia win, which is a record, but certainly not her first record by any means. Ever since her early years of competition, breaking records has been her business. She was the first woman ever to win titles in two divisions at the same pro qualifying event - Figure and Fitness champ at the 2007 Team Universe. She was the youngest ever winner of the Figure Olympia, aged 25 in 2009, and the first Figure competitor to win FIVE pro events in the same year (2011). She retained her Olympia titles in 2011 and 2013 (the first woman to retain the title twice, of course!), and now, aged 30, this former gymnast from Michigan is the first to win four.



Nicole says: To be successful you have to be willing to do whatever it takes. You have to put your heart and soul into it and be willing to make sacrifices. You have to be dedicated and push yourself past your comfort level. Only until then, until you want it more than just "kinda", will you be amazed at what you can accomplish.


FITNESS: OKSANA GRISHINA (Russia)


left to right: Fiona Harris (6th), Bethany Cisternino (4th), Regiane Da Silva (2nd), Oksana Grishina, Tanji Johnson (3rd), Myriam Capes (5th).

I've said it before and I'll say it again, what I know about the Fitness division I know because of Oksana Grishina. And now that serial Fitness Olympia winner Adela Garcia has retired, Oksana could be set to dominate for many years to come.




As with the Figure division, this year's Olympia definitely gave me a new level of appreciation for the Fitness competitors. For some unknown reason it had never occurred to me before just how difficult it must be for them to perform their amazing routines while their bodies are so depleted. And no other competitor, it seems to me, can ever match Oksana's routines. This one was no exception, with Bodybuilding.com writer Cassie Smith suggesting that it was good enough to take her to victory after she'd been judged only 4th or 5th in the first, "physique", round.



I reckon you'll like Oksana backstage before her routine on Flex Online.



Oksana says: I still feel compelled to try to improve as an athlete... to do better, to be better. Competition is in my blood and I am a perfectionist. I love to compete against the best athletes in the world and I hope, through my performances and my hard work, to leave a lasting impression on the professional fitness world and be an inspiration for future fitness competitors.


PHYSIQUE: JULIANA MALACARNE (Brazil)


left to right: Karina Nascimento (4th), Dana Linn Bailey (2nd), Juliana Malacarne, Tycie Coppett (3rd), Sabrina Taylor (5th).

Dana Linn Bailey and Juliana Malacarne standing side-by-side in stark comparison was the moment for which everyone had been waiting. It would be worth the price of admission, a genuine competitive race for a coveted title, is how Steve Wennerstrom described the aptly-named Women's Physique Showdown, and even a hardened old female bodybuilding fan like me has to admit that the best competition at the 2014 Olympia was provided by these two amazing women.



And even the most ardent Dana Linn Bailey fan had to admit that La Malacarne had the beating of her this time. In a sport where so often the fans feel the judges got it wrong, no one has argued that Juliana wasn't worth her $15,000 first place.




She spent her early 30s as a figure competitor with quote too much muscle unquote, rarely in the top 10, and often outside the top 15. How times have changed! As soon as the Physique division was created she started winning pro titles, and now, aged 40, she has become, I think I'm right in saying, the first ever Brazilian Olympia winner.




Watch the denouement of Dana Linn and Juliana's battle here.

And, by the way, can anyone tell me why, when you have a top 6 in every other division, you only get a top 5 called out for the final posedown in Physique?


BODYBUILDING: IRIS KYLE (USA)


left to right: Anne Freitas (6th), Alana Shipp (4th), Alina Popa (2nd), Iris Kyle, Debi Laszewski (3rd), Yaxeni Oriquen (5th).

Should Kyle decide to compete for another dozen years, Steve Wennerstrom wrote, after Iris won her first Ms O in 2004, the mind boggles at what she may accomplish. 




Well, it turned out not to be a dozen years, but what Iris has accomplished did turn out to be mind-boggling. On top of her seven Ms International titles, this was her ninth Ms Olympia win in a row, and her tenth in total. And with the medal around her neck, before the ink had fully dried on the judges scorecards, Iris Kyle announced her retirement from competition on the stage she has dominated for over a decade.



And sadly, this final act of a great champion (perhaps the greatest ever champion in not just female bodybuilding, but the whole of bodybuilding) may well be, if the reaction to the news among many so-called "fans" of the sport is anything to go by, the most popular thing she has ever done.

She deserves better. MUCH better. So we'll say no more about it right now, but later in the week FMS will be giving some (long overdue) BIG BIG love to Iris Kyle.

For now, we'll just say congratulations to Iris and to all the Olympia winners!

Tube of the Week

What else would it be?

You've probably watched it more than a few times already, but we say give yourself a Friday treat and watch it all over again. Alina Popa's 2014 Ms Olympia routine...



And FMS' Olympia review begins tomorrow...

Enjoy!

On Beauty

Given the subjects of the last three days here at FMS, it's hardly surprising that I've been thinking about the beauty of muscular women rather a lot this week, but the ever-excellent Ryan Takahashi's excellent recent essay on The "Alternate Femininity" of Female Bodybuilders has also served as a source of today's musings.



Mr Takahashi's essay neatly debunks the myth that female bodybuilders are "masculine" just because their own particular brand of femininity is unconventional before turning more specifically to the concept of "beauty". They [muscular and non-muscular women] are all beautiful... The only difference is how universally regarded their beauty is, he writes. Most of us can agree that Bar Rafaeli is super gorgeous. But not everyone can agree that Monica Martin is equally gorgeous.



Now I'm not about to disagree with the man, but I guess it's indicative of just how far I have immersed myself in the world of female muscle that I had to look Bar Rafaeli up. I had heard the name - I'm not completely out of touch(!) - but I'd never, as far as I knew, seen her before. There she was, in all her conventional beauty. And it turned out that yes, most men do apparently agree that she is, as Mr Takahashi puts it, "super gorgeous". But not, it seems, me. Quite honestly, she left me cold.

I'll give you another example. At the place I've been working recently there's a young French female lawyer. The entirety of the male staff at the firm (well, the straight ones, anyway) are utterly smitten with her, and not just because she earns lawyer money! She's a looker, as they say. But her beauty is a Bar Rafaeli kind of conventional beauty. I'd rather spend some quality time with the girl from the post room who does Muay Thai and who arrives at work all sweaty from her cycle in. I'm a minority of one.

The days when I would worry about this sort of thing are long gone. Why am I different? or What's wrong with me? are not questions I ask any more. But I am asking myself another question: Suppose I'd never seen Bar Rafaeli or Monica before and you showed me a picture of just their faces. Suppose you did the same with the French lawyer and the post room girl. Suppose I knew nothing about them, that I just had their face to go on. Would I find Monica and Ms Muay Thai more beautiful?



Is there something identifiably different about the faces of female bodybuilders and fit, muscular women more generally? Do they have (for want of a better word) "stronger" features, perhaps? Or is it more about their inner strength and confidence, and comfort in their own skin revealing itself somehow? Shining through their eyes or something? These are obviously not questions that I'm about to give a definitive answer to, but I will say that if you look at any before & after transformation picture you can see that it's not just that the newly-muscular woman's body has changed. The face has changed too. Leaner, yes, of course, but isn't there something else as well?



I haven't always been so exclusive about associating facial beauty with physical beauty. Seven years ago I fell in love with my wife, and that was, at least initially, to do with how beautiful I thought she was. But since she's got into working out (see FMS passim), I'd say that yes, her face has changed. She's happier within herself, and that inner contentment is, I think, what's making her even more beautiful to me.



I could well be over-analysing. It may be as simple as the fact that fit women have the healthy glow that comes from regular exercise and a clean diet. After all, isn't the pilates teacher always better-looking than her students?! Nevertheless, I've always thought it would be interesting to reverse the experiment mentioned above. Does it work the other way around? Can men whose taste in women is more conventional tell when they're looking at a muscular woman? If you show a non-female muscle head a picture of just the face of a muscular woman, would he find her beautiful?



What exactly it would prove if he did I'm not exactly sure, maybe just that the muscle woman you chose was, as well as being unconventionally beautiful, also conventionally beautiful in many ways. And that's not really the point, is it?! But at least it gave me an excuse to feature the undeniably gorgeous Mavi and Shannon (it's back to Courtney again now, apparently), which is no bad thing.

So, what is my point?

I didn't promise one, but I feel I should try to come up with one nevertheless...

While checking out Georgina McConnell's Instagram the other day I came across this: The woman who does not require validation from anyone is the most feared individual on the planet. It's a quote attributed to London-based political writer Mohadesa Najumi (and you can search for more on her if you dare). Now, I doubt Ms Najumi had muscular women in mind when she came up with this little nugget, but she'd probably agree their utter lack of regard for the role society would have them play qualifies them as the "feared individual" type.



When female muscle fans like me write about the Beauty of the Muscular Woman or whatever, are we not guilty of deluding ourselves that our words, our arguments, in some way "validate" their beauty? If so, I imagine Georgina McConnell and Mohadesa Najumi would accuse us of missing the point entirely. We flatter ourselves that they care what we think. They neither want nor need defending.

And I suspect it is this that I, you, and the rest of the brethren are really responding to. It's not so much that the muscular woman offers an alternative concept of beauty, and more that she offers no invitation whatsoever for you to judge her beauty at all.



I started this post yesterday, and today, while having lunch with a colleague, the pretty young French lawyer came up. I confessed she didn't do it for me. "Is it an 'I'm married so I don't talk about how hot some chicks are' thing?" he wondered. Not at all, I said, and then I confessed I found the post room girl much more exciting. "Oh," said my colleague, "You like chicks with the fuck-you attitude." Shit, I said to myself. I've been blabbing away on this subject for hours and there it is, all succinctly put. Damn!



Enjoy!

Dani Reardon Temporarily Becomes the Most Famous Female Bodybuilder on the Planet (But Everything Seems to Be OK Now)

It is (I imagine) unlikely that news of FMS heartthrob Dani Reardon's arrest in Florida in the week leading up to the Olympia passed you by. If you didn't hear about it in your own local or national media, there's been plenty of chatter on the forums...

Temporarily, Dani became the most famous female bodybuilder in the world - or at least the English-speaking world anyway. You and I and every other man or woman interested in the sport knew who Dani was long before the 15th September, when the story broke in the USA, but by the 17th, when the story had reached Australia and New Zealand via the UK (and all points in between no doubt), more people knew Dani than Iris, Alina, Juliana, Dana Linn and all the other Olympia contestants put together.



COPS: FEMALE BODYBUILDER WENT ON RAMPAGE, KICKED IN CAR WINDSHIELD reads the headline on the Breaking News USA website - the first report of the incident, published on the afternoon of 15th September, reproduced here in full:

A female bodybuilder has been accused of going on a drunken rampage in California.

Police say 24 year old Dani Reardon (full name: Danielle Reardon) kicked in the windshield of her boyfriend’s pickup truck during a fight. Reardon reportedly reeked of alcohol and has been charged with resisting arrest and battery (domestic violence) in Orange County courts.

The police report says police received complaints that Reardon was hitting a man and screaming at him while attending a party. She was found inside a Ford F-150, kicking the dashboard and eventually the windshield.

Her live-in boyfriend Ian Schofield hard a red mark behind his left ear and on his neck and a scrape on his right knee. He told cops, "She tackled me and hit me in the face." But he refused to press charges.

And this, essentially, with the incident correctly relocated to Florida, and less of the "rampage", was the report that went around the online news source world.

Details about Dani and her career were added here and there, with the prize for absolutely the most bizarre detail going to the Orlando Sentinel, whose report post-dated the Breaking News USA piece by a couple of hours. Their piece informs us that according to one NPC judge, Danielle has very pretty lines [but] she needs to improve her conditioning at the next level as though the readers were all saying to themselves, "Yes, she's in trouble, but how can she get higher placings at her contests?"

The original Breaking News article was accompanied by Dani looking more than a little dishevelled and forlorn in her mugshot (bit of a shock for a Brit that - the fact that your arrest photo can be seen by all and sundry, it would most definitely never happen here), but the main image (below) showed her all smiles and striations.



By the time the story reached New York on the morning of the 16th, there were now two images of Dani at her best to accompany that of Dani at her lowest.



And as the story sailed across the Atlantic and reached our shores here, more and more images of the gorgeous Ms Reardon were added, so by the time the Daily Mail reported the story on the night of the 16th, there were five of the best to enjoy.

And a You Tube preview clip from TanyaFitness!



On the afternoon of the 17th September, Australian online news sources had the story on their pages. And, yes, you guessed it, they now had even more pictures of Dani, and relatively little text. Newscom.au outdid everybody with SEVEN images of Dani and her beautiful bod illustrating just over 100 words about her and her arrest.



We've seen in the past on FMS how female bodybuilder stories need a "female bodybuilders are freaks" angle to be interesting to the wider media - how the FBB subject was "turned into a man" by taking steroids or, how her muscles make it hard/impossible to find a man, for example. But with Dani's story, well, neither of these angles is going to work, so essentially what the story boiled down to was not so much "young female bodybuilder turns violent after drinking" but rather "really really really good-looking young female bodybuilder turns violent after drinking".

Call me a cynic if you will, but it seems to me that this is what the reporting of Dani's story ended up being about, and became more and more about as it travelled around the world. There was basically nothing to write about here - young woman gets drunk and does something stupid is hardly news. However, the editors weren't going to miss the chance of putting this gorgeous young woman onto their pages. Consequently, there were more and more images and less and less text every time.

And so, for a few days at least, and while she was going through a tough time no doubt, Danielle Reardon was the most famous female bodybuilder in the world.



By the 18th September the (non-) story had ceased to be a story, and the mainstream media forgot all about Dani again, as, I imagine, did most of those who had never heard of Dani before. Meanwhile, she had received "positive vibes" from friends, fans, supporters and her family, and she seems to have made it up with her beau.

She couldn't do much about the traffic she found herself stuck in the day before I compiled this post, but she at least used the time to take her first lot of selfies since the incident, and post them on her Instagram, which can only be good news.



And her line of gym wear got some free publicity as well.

It's name? Kausa Rukus. HA!



Enjoy!