Tampa: Reckoning

So, yesterday's post - which you would have read after the event - was written last Friday - before any of the results were in, after I'd seen prejudging pics from the Figure and Physique divisions, but before any of the Female Bodybuilders had got on stage.

In the post I made a few predictions, or perhaps observations would be a better word. The main three were: 1. Autumn Swansen looked amazing; 2. Angela Salvagno - sensational during prep - sadly appeared not to have made the show; and 3. FBBing was probably going to amount to a showdown between Alina Popa and Lisa Cross.

Well, now we know... How did I do?

1. AUTUMN SWANSEN LOOKED AMAZING



I was hardly going out on a limb, but - in a line-up of 35, remember - immediately noticing just how back-to-her-best Autumn was does give me a little bit of hope that I do talk sense from time to time. And - surprise surprise - the judges agreed with me!




It's not all about the placing, she wrote after disappointments earlier in the season in San Jose and Chicago. It's about the progress. Well, it all came together for her in Tampa, and Autumn got to go home with some money and a very big sword indeed.



Her routines are always a pleasure. If only there was video...



No wardrobe malfunction this time!

2. NO ANGELA



My assumption seemed reasonable at the time. Despite looking ridiculously ready about a week and a half before the show, Angie has had her health problems over the past few years, it didn't seem beyond the bounds of possibility that she'd be struck down as she attempted to peak. On top of that, there wasn't a single pic of Angie at the athletes' meeting or the check-in. She's hardly known for being camera shy, and there was also nothing from Tampa on her social media. So, I put two and two together...



BOOM!




How wrong I was! Here she was, back on stage for the first time since 2015, and back as a Bodybuilder for the first time since the same Tampa Pro seven long years ago. Honestly, I don't think I've ever been so happy to be wrong. Angie, however, had mixed emotions. Everything was great except my placing, she said (on her updated after Friday Instagram). I still have carb issues, which killed my conditioning. She's not going to make us wait seven years again though. I’m back and I will not give up. I will get into the condition and have the size I need to compete at the top, she promised. I'm Angela Fucking Salvagno and I will be back next year!!!



Believe!

3. POPA-CROSS SHOWDOWN



Not a one-two, but a one-four. If I'd predicted one or the other would win there'd be a big green tick above. Instead, I confidently imagined they would take first and second. So, with Pauline Nelson getting the runner's-up prize and (more surprisingly given her previous placings this year) LaDawn McDay claiming 3rd, it's a big red cross.




Alina was, understandably, over the moon. For all her achievements, for all her fame and for all her many many fans, the premier Female Bodybuilder of the last decade had never won a pro title before last weekend. This is a special night for me, she wrote, holding her sword aloft (and incidentally, doesn't it look a lot smaller when she holds it than when Autumn does?) It's always a wonderful feeling to be a champion.



Quite honestly, I'm surprised she can remember the feeling. It's been, in fact, ten years since at the World Amateur Championships Alina was actually judged the winner of a contest rather than been declared the should-have-been winner by us adoring fans.




A new experience for Alina, then, and a new experience for us as well - enhanced Alina on stage. The tut-tutters had already aired their views on the forums long before this show - "She was much better without implants," and so on. And there's also been doubt expressed in the wake of her victory that she'll be able to compete with Helle and Margie at the Rising Phoenix. Alina, it seems, has come back to a backlash!



I'd advise those making predictions about the Rising Phoenix to proceed with caution! And anyway, Alina's back poses have hardly "lost" any shock and awe, have they?

So, to answer the question posed at the beginning of today's post, how did I do? Well, I got 1/3, which is even worse, according to the Meat Loaf scale, than "not bad".

I've got to cheer myself up somehow, and trawling through the many many images of the show seems like a good way to do that... More from Tampa on FMS tomorrow.

Tampa: Tease

I'm writing this last Friday, and the female muscle meat feast that is the Tampa Pro is already under way. As well as a host of other images from in and around the show, photos from the Figure and Physique prejudging are already up on NPC News Online. The line-ups in those divisions are truly immense, 35 Physique Dreams and a mind-boggling 49 Figure Phenoms. We're all going to be busy over the next few days!



I was pleased to notice a good few Figure competitors insisting on putting cheeky and/or downright brazen flexing into their presentations. Julie Mayer, who we enjoyed recently at the LA Pro, went for the cheeky tricep flex while transitioning between front and side-on poses - known in my house as "The Gillon", after Cyd, who was the first competitor I ever noticed doing this. Amber Eutsey, meanwhile, just went ahead and flexed her bicep. Boom! If it was up to me, that would automatically make her the champion. Sadly, or thankfully depending on your viewpoint, it isn't.



In the Physique division, Autumn Swansen didn't just look good after her make-up had been applied by Jamie Pinder - now there's a hotel room this boy would have liked to have been on the inside of. She looked pretty amazing on stage as well.



How the judges decide among so many women is beyond me. My brain, and possibly other parts of my body too, would simply explode under such a female muscle barrage. Would it, I wonder, be helpful to have some sort of pre-prejudging at the check-in? It might encourage fewer baggy, muscle-hiding tops and more beautiful figure-revealing dresses at least. Kendyl Seawright and Maggie Watson would have claimed an early advantage on Swell's (sticky) Figure scorecard if so.



But for all the Figure and Physique fun, Tampa has, in recent years, established itself as the greatest FBB show on earth outside of the Rising Phoenix. I'm not quite sure it's going to have the sort of line-up we've delighted in before - no Sheila Bleck, no Virginia Sanchez, for example. And apparently no Angie Salvagno either.



This was Angie, looking exciting and feeling excited a week and a half ago. Can’t wait to finally compete again after 7 years!!!! she told her IG following. Since then, however, not a peep from the normally hyper-active Angie, and as there's not a single pic of her at the athlete's meeting or check-in or anywhere else I can find, I'm assuming something has happened to stop her being at the show and I'm hoping that she's all OK.



Alina's there though - competing, not just Wings of Strength cheerleading. No doubt who Annie'll be rooting for. It's been a while since she's got her hands on Alina!



And surely the contest will be between the great uncrowned and Britain's finest (and runner-up in 2016 and 2017) Lisa Cross - a woman who never turns up to the check-in in anything less than a beautiful tight dress. It's a measure of Lisa's progress over the last few years and how far Alina's shooting star has fallen since she had her injury worries that I am talking about them as rivals for the same title, and I say that fully aware that by the time you read this it will be apparent if I have got it badly wrong!



So I cunningly distract you from the previous paragraph with the help of Irene Andersen enjoying the Florida sunshine. Such incredible muscle mass - I bet the water level fell quite considerably when Irene hauled herself out of there.

Tampa. It'll already have happened by the time you read this, but as I write it's only just begun. To say I am a little bit excited would be something of an understatement - though even I am not quite as excited as Ashley Hromyak seems to be...



Enjoy!

Sunday Showdown

One of our alternatives to the Sunday Sizzler, the Sunday Showdown brings you two women, famed for a particular body part, going head-to head. Although to be fair...

Only one of the women in today's showdown is famed for her calves. The other, while having absolutely gorgeous and very respectable (ie. lickable) calves, can't really make it a contest. Then again, can anyone compete with Jill Diorio in the calf department?



I think not.



Diana Schnaidt - whose (respectable, lickable) calves are next to Jill's - is, however, rather an Amazon in the (generally) 5'5"-or-less world of elite female muscle. And so to redress the balance slightly, here's she is towering over Lady Calves and Melanie Horton (though not Buddha, obviously) during their post-show night out in Omaha.



We'll call it a draw on the biceps or we'll have to find something Melanie wins at. That dude though - Mr. Diorio I believe - is definitely winning at life. Definitely!

Woman of the Week: Thea Dougher

I first became aware of her by the name she's more commonly known as, Thea Renee (sometimes with, sometimes without the last name Schuler added as well), a few years ago. Big, blond, beautiful and tattooed, I remember being impressed, she may even have featured on the blog - though I can't recall in what capacity - at some stage.



She seemed to disappear, I'd read something about her getting married - or did I dream that? Anyway, off the radar she went, until the back end of last year, when a bunch of images appeared on GwM, along with "news" that she had a new Instagram moniker - crazy_fitfreak. She looked fantastic - bigger, more beautiful. And as 2017 turned to 2018, it looked more and more as though Thea was preparing for something.



Ah yes! That's right... MILITARY.

Scrolling through her IG one night jogged the memory, explained why she wasn't on the radar (geddit?!), why I'd been so keen in the first place (tough as nails, uniform) and why the only YouTube video I could find of her was a 2014 contest in Guam.



The something she was preparing for turned out to be the NPC Los Angeles Championships, where she competed, not under Schuler, but her married name of Dougher - Thea Dougher. Despite my suspicions that she'd got married some time ago, she was in fact a bride only this year, and quite the outfit she got married in. However, at the time I checked the pics of the contest, I didn't know any of that, so I wasn't expecting much from the Physique winner, because experience tells me that at regional NPC shows, it's best not to expect too much, even of the Physique...

WOW!!!




Even then - perhaps because I was a bit, you know, "worked up" - I didn't immediately equate this vision of muscular beauty with the (largely unglamorous and unsmiling) Thea I knew before. It was the back tat - "that horroble [sic] back tattoo" as it is known in some circles - that eventually made me realise exactly who I was looking at. Big, blond, beautiful and tattooed (yeah!) AND glammed, tanned and striking those poses with power and elegance, she really ticked EVERY SINGLE ONE of the boxes.



Full swoonspin. Felt pretty damn good up there! she said after prejudging. Looked good too, pretty much like my idea of Physique - a huge, powerful and yet very feminine woman. No surprise she won first in her class and Overall with a body (and styling) like that. She had a package, as Paige Sandgren once put it, that "the judges can't deny". So proud of what I brought to the stage and very happy with it all! she wrote as she celebrated. I’ve come a long way since my last show years ago.



We’ll see what happens next, she continues...



This was four years after her first show. And she apparently made her fella wait a few years. I'm seriously worried it might be 2022 before we see her on stage again, though I very sincerely hope not. Still, imagine how big she would be able to get by then...

Enjoy!