The Year in Review: October

THE OLYMPIA(S)




Our Olympia review began (a little tardily, I admit) with a reminder that these days there isn't A Ms Olympia, but four. The Ms Olympia was last held in 2014, and since then we've had four Ms Olympias each year and yet no [one with the actual title of] Ms Olympia. And the four from 2017 - two new, two recrowned were: Oksana Grishina (Ms Fitness Olympia), Cydney Gillon (Ms Figure Olympia), Angelica Teixeira (Ms Bikini Olympia), and Juliana Malacarne (Ms Physique Olympia).

And then there was Natalia...



It is indeed scary to think how excited I might be getting looking at Natalia three years down the road. My ticker barely made it through her Olympia appearance this year. I really should schedule a check-up, but you know, it's finding the time to do it...



Britain's Emma Paveley took full advantage of her first Olympia experience, keeping the party going long after she had taken her place on stage among her sport's elite.




And we confessed to enjoying the Physique Olympia so much we ended up actually sympathising with the judges. Fact is, there were 26 amazing women on that stage, and it can't have been an easy job choosing between such a magnificently muscled line-up. You have to go on something, and if that something is "she looks to have made improvements from what I remember from her last year", then there's not much we can do about it. Relax. Enjoy the muscle. There's plenty of it.



We did reserve a special mention for our favourite Physique swoon though, especially given the pasting some forum twazzock had given here earlier in the year: Well, I think it's safe to say this opinionated forum member's nice little half-baked Dani demise theory (posted mid-August) hasn't exactly turned out to be 100% accurate. He's clearly not a Dani fan, whereas I'm proud to say I am. Anytime Dani's got a posing suit on I'm happy, and given the doom-laden predictions (our forum posting friend offered one of many) I was very pleasantly surprised to see she'd lost none of her sparkle and that bod is as spectacular as ever. Love the hair too! I could thank him for making my expectations so low I couldn't possibly have been disappointed by Dani's package, but that would suggest I had paid his fantasy theory some mind. I didn't.

[you so obviously did - ed.]



Collectively though, there was general agreement on the one debut Physique Olympian who should have placed much much higher - Jill Diorio. And those calves of hers.



She was in the sort of condition where even her cheeks looked ripped. "At the Olympia she looked SICK!" a forum poster noted, "Too cut for the judges, but I LOVE IT!" He was not alone. She was, we collectively decided, "exceptional", "flawless", "breath-taking". Her back double biceps in particular got the boys' attention. "Rock hard, symmetrical, big and sexy!" wrote one fan. "One of the best physiques I've ever seen."

BARCELONA

Events came thick and fast in October. We'd barely got our breath back after Jill and those calves before we were swooning all over the place for some of Europe's best amateur talent, with our focus at the start of the week on the British contingent.



We have a new champion. Rising British Bodyfitness star Danielle "Dani" Osborn won her "up to 168cm" class, and though following in the footsteps of Carly Thornton ("short" Physique, 2015) and Emma Paveley ("short" Fitness, 2016), she's the very first British Bodyfitness athlete to be a class winner there.

And there was Linda Gartside. Always a pleasure.



2017: The girl who was once too embarrassed to join a gym and instead worked out with dumbbells in her garage as Arnold looked on from the cover of his book is about to go on stage at his event and perform under his banner. Her "soul dream", she calls it, is about to come true. She's 47. And (once again) happy in her own skin. "Linny had been lost for some time," says Rochdale's finest, "the Arnold Classic Europe was where I found "me" again. The moment I gave up the chase for winning, I regained my inner freedom, and found my happiness. I have found the "me" that I lost."

It wasn't all about the Brits though.



Spanish champ and Overall Physique winner Laura Pintado and "the big and beautiful Czech dream" Alena Hatvani gave us plenty to swoon over.

As did Hevumisa.



Check out Part I here.

"THE NERD BEAST"

A brief pause in contest reporting for this year's breakthrough swoon.



Paige is suddenly everywhere, "The Female Hercules" (with girl-next-door looks), she reminds of Monica Mollica, Lauren Quinn, and (no higher praise, surely) Heather Policky "only hotter" (?!). She's "The Nerd Beast", and "the female muscle find of the year". Where did she come from? I think I'm in love. So, that's you, me, and just about every other head who's been turned on to Paige so far - 8,000+ IG followers and I'm guessing they are not all budding WPD competitors.

CZECH IN AT THE BRITISH CHAMPIONSHIPS




Absolutely unprecedented, and most welcome - FMS' favourite female muscle contest lensman, Eastlabs' Igor Kopcek, was at the recent UKBFF British Championships doing what he does so well. For once, I am able to put together a report on the show where my problem is not where to find images without big f*** off watermarks saying DO NOT F***ING COPY all over them, but how to choose which of the 2,799(!) images of the female classes to include. I've been in heaven for the last few hours, and I don't mind admitting it. Mr Kopcek, I doff my chapeau to you, sir!



The judges chose a pretty exciting champ too!

FANCY A DATE?



Any excuse to post gorgeous muscle women like Victoria Puentes in their little black dresses, but this time it was a website promising "Female Bodybuilder Dating" and the advice of a forum bod who'd loved (and lost) three different muscle women that got us righteously indignant. Don't seek their help, don't follow his advice - he lost them, remember? Go to a gym. Trust me, it's where they are. They'll admit it, too.

TALES OF THE TOWEL



And we finished October and entered November with, depending on who you believe, an inspired addition to the collection of female muscle niches we have collated over the years, or a new low for a blog that's hardly had its most a stellar of years.

[dude! you've got to start letting these things lie - ed.]

Tales of the Towel: Special K

Katrin Kirsch



Featured on FMS in 2013 for her "bullets", Katrin had fallen off the radar rather then, and hasn't returned. Still, this (for her) rather modest pic is worth looking at again if only to remind us the hand she's using to keep the towel up is entirely superfluous.

Kortney Olson



The CEO of GRRRL clothing captures herself in a rare moment of relaxation and an even rarer moment when she's not dressed in one of her own products, although she's practising what she preaches nonetheless. Not many CEOs you can say that about.

Heidi Krochter, Natalya Kuzmina

Heidi has been somewhat less talked about on the forums this year than last, though why that should be exactly is a bit of a mystery to me. This year she's not (as far as I know) competed, but she has done a terrific photoshoot with ace lensman Gene X. Hwang, and the rest of the time she's just kept on being the Heidi we adored last year. We might look at the raised eyebrow and imagine she's letting us know that she knows what we really want to see is below the bottom of the picture, but we're way off - unsurprisingly that's not what it's about at all (see the post on her IG for details).



And while we're acknowledging that appearances can be deceptive, would you have guessed (if you didn't know) from this sauna(?) shot that Natalya is not so much a Bodybuilder as a powerlifter? And of some note, too. If your goal, for example, is to deadlift, say 100kg (220lbs) at some point - a fine ambition - then consider that this beautiful young lady from Kazakhstan deadlifts 215+kg (474+lbs). For reps.

Katka Kyptova



And our last, but by no means least, Special K is, according to our (hardly exhaustive) research, the woman who takes and posts more towel-clad selfies than any other.



Forensic Katka-watchers will be able to time and date these with some precision based on hairdo, muscularity, ink coverage, and, I dare say, a multitude of other factors. The layman could care less. The layman's doing what I'm doing right after I finish compiling this post. The layman is only concerned with a happy ending, and this week's posts are going to get one - the last photo on the right, in my case. What divine definition!



If you've anything left in the tank afterwards, perhaps you'd like to check out a rar of 25 images that didn't quite make the edit this week. You would? Great! It's here. Enjoy!

Tales of the Towel: Towel Classic Part 2

If they were lucky enough to be sticking a camera on Colette Nelson any time in the noughties, the schmotographer was pretty much guaranteed gold, and today's Towel Classic from the HerBiceps "Lost Archive" collection is, without question, exactly that.



Don't know how long it will last on YouTube, so I've uploaded it elsewhere for safe keeping - if it's not showing above on the page, then you'll be wanting to go here.

These days Colette is more about making other women look their best, offering training, tanning, and make-up services out of her New York base. None, as far as I can see, ever look anything like as good as she did back then. They're not even close.

Tales of the Towel: Towelheads

Redefining ethnic slurs so you don't have to...



Here's NPC Fitness competitor and self-styled "Lean Queen" Kyla Ford fresh out of a hot shower. Or maybe a cold one. I like to alternate between the hot and cold water for 1-minute intervals, she says, putting the water as hot as my body can handle, and then as cold as my body can handle. The hot water relaxes the body and helps to reduce stress, she explains, while the cold helps to reduce inflammation and stimulates the removal of toxins through the skin and lymph. So... which one's last?

Either way, if I didn't need a cold one already...



Not quite my idea of heaven, but definitely a starting point.

This must be what life with Dani is like. Twice a day, possibly. No wonder her (perfect) skin looks a touch dry. I'll grab the cream. Or even better I'll make some fresh. Cream.

What this woman does to me!

And last, but by no means least, it's to Russia we go. With love...



These are pretty rare items, I would say, because Ekaterina Kuznetsova's standard M.O. re: locker room and bathroom selfies is not to bother with the towel at all - and she's also (most happily) got a penchant for not bothering with the tiny thong either!



Kyla Ford is The Lean Queen on Instagram; in all probability I don't need to point you towards Dani's social media (but just in case, here she is), and you can find Ekaterina, aka "Katyukha", avec et sans thong on "the Russian Facebook" - her VK page.

Enjoy!

Tales of the Towel: On Madarasi Hargita

Rising to a peak of 1,801m in the Romanian Eastern Carpathians, Madarasi Hargita is one of the highest and most visited mountains in the region. And in January this year, Susanna Tirpak was indulging her new passion for photography right there.

"Beauty on highest level" is how she describes the place, even if she might as well be talking about herself. And if you are wondering exactly why I have a picture of a fully-clothed (albeit ravishingly beautiful) Susanna in the snow (even when the way she's holding the camera is sexy!) in a week of posts that feature towels, well, as Susanna says, there's nothing better than "a hot shower after a day out in the freezing cold".



Except perhaps a picture - or indeed two - of a ravishing muscle beauty like Susanna after her hot shower after her day out in the freezing cold in nothing but a towel.



As far as I can tell, Susanna gets more gorgeous on an almost daily basis, but you don't have to take my utterly smitten word for it - see for yourself on her Instagram.