Here is the source of the pic. His trainer passed away recently.
https://kulturistika.ronnie.cz/c-38875-kurt-marnul-prukopnik-kulturistiky-v-rakousku.html
Graz Team 1967
Thanks for the link!
Quite a good translation by Chatgpt
Pioneer of bodybuilding in Austria, Kurt Marnul, was born on May 30, 1929, in Graz as the son of Karl and Josefine Marnul and spent his entire life there. If it weren't for him, we probably wouldn't have Arnold the bodybuilder, but who knows. When Arnold was three years old, Marnul was weightlifting under the guidance of Helmut Knauer (born 1913), a former RAF pilot, at the AC-Vorwärts Graz club. With his friend Josef Aspan, they switched to bodybuilding in 1953, but it wasn't until 1958 that Marnul opened the Athletik Union Graz gym at the stadium in Liebenau, shared by weightlifters and bodybuilders. It was an unfriendly room, tucked under the concrete beams of the stadium circuit, with roughly plastered walls and a concrete floor on which lay mats made of fošen, shattered into splinters by millions of blows from discarded dumbbells. The equipment included squat racks, several benches, a pile of dumbbell discs, a pull-up bar, parallel bars for push-ups, and a heap of dumbbells. The room was not heated, and there was a hole in the wall, usually plugged with newspapers; no one mentions changing rooms, showers, or toilets. Marnul made simple exercise machines according to pictures in American magazines Strength & Health and Muscle Builder/Power and effectively managed the club where both weightlifters and bodybuilders trained: Helmut Knaur (1913), Harry Maurer (1944), Johny Schnetz, Karl Kainrath (1942), Adi Ziegner (1948), Helmut Cerncic (1940), Harald Gobec (1942), and from 1962 Arnold Schwarzenegger. Later, they added another eighteen machines, including a pec deck, extension bench, leg press, and bicep machine with elbow support, which Arnold personally painted and was the first to try. "These were the first machines in all of Austria," Marnul claims.
As a four-time Austrian champion (1961 to 1964), Marnul was supposed to have taken 4th place at Mr. Universe 1961, and I pondered this for a while. Then I happened to get the complete results of FIHC Mr. Universe in Vienna, and behold, Marnul's name is in 13th place (1st Tommy Kono, 2nd Bill March, 3rd Guy Mierczuk, 4th El Guindi, 5th Louis Martin, etc.). FIHC Mr. Europe was also announced concurrently, and Marnul was seventh there. In the hall on September 25, a fourteen-year-old Arnold was reportedly sitting; it was mainly the World Weightlifting Championships, which the weightlifters from Graz came to watch, especially Tommy Kono and Yuri Vlasov. In 1962, Marnul won the title of Mr. Hercules in both bodybuilding and powerlifting; in 1965, he was supposed to have won the European Championship (at least as stated on his website). Measurements from 1964: biceps 47 cm, chest 131 cm, waist 78 cm, thigh 64 cm, and calf 41 cm. In 1966, he set a European bench press record of 220 kg, adding 5 kg a year later, which was supposed to be a world record (we do not have the organizers or results available), but for a body weight of 90 kg, it is a very high-quality performance. A
squat of 200 kg and a deadlift of 250 kg are also not bad, as are typical weightlifting lifts: press 125 kg, snatch 110 kg, and clean and jerk 145 kg. At the age of 72 (in 2001), he was still supposed to win the World Senior Bench Press Championship by pushing 145 kg. I found the results, but Marnul's name is nowhere to be found.
The text of a report from the newspaper Die Kleine Zeitung about the competition in Graz in 1964 states that the trained baker-confectioner was initially a construction foreman and eventually a "Baupolier," which I would cautiously translate as a foreman or master on the construction site; the German Wikipedia states "construction manager." Where the four-time divorced playboy got the money for a luxury car, motorcycle, fashionable clothing, and other expenses, I have no idea, but he was a dandy, liked to wear white jeans and glasses with yellow lenses, and when he drove through Graz in a Renault Florida, the ladies couldn't take their eyes off him. In addition to training advice, he provided Arnold with a role model worth emulating, so Arnold wanted to be like Marnul. However, Arnold also had other plans, and on the first day, he told Marnul: "I will be Mr. Universe." He trained six, sometimes seven days a week for three hours and gained 20 kg of pure muscle in four years. Arnold's progress surprised the coach, as did the first signs of a tendency toward unsportsmanlike behavior. He also noticed Arnold's stomach: "People usually have three rows of muscles on their stomachs, but Arnold only had two. No matter how hard he worked, he couldn't get that third row, so when posing, he held his forearm across his stomach."
There are still disputes about whether Marnul supplied Arnold with anabolic steroids, although none of the participants ever admitted it (he allegedly confided to Ricky Wayne that he had been using them since he was thirteen, which doesn't make much sense).
"I saw how he wanted to go higher and higher. If it were up to him, he would probably take dumbbells to bed," says Marnul. According to Maurer and Helmut Cerncic, Arnold was willing to go even further: "If someone told him to eat a kilo of shit for big muscles, he would do it." Arnold was in such a situation at the time that he couldn't even afford to buy dinner, so Marnul often provided food after training and also drove his protégés home on a motorcycle after evening training. "Arnold often rejoiced in the shower, even singing," adds Marnul. "It took a while for us to figure it out - he was happy because of the hot water, which they didn't have at home." Today, the gym is relocated to the basement of the building at 31 Hütterbrenner Strasse, Jakomini district, Graz, and the original machines and Arnold's diaries (if such a thing existed, how instructive a book could have been made from them!) were sold to a wealthy interested party in Romania.
Arnold's colleague from that time, Harry Maurer, knows something about it: "At that time, there was not yet such a quantity of preparations that are swallowed or injected into athletes today (at least many). Dianabol had just come on the market, and Arnold did not deny that he took it. From the sports doctor, we had an injection of Anadur, administered once a week (now the active ingredient is known as Nandrolone or Deca Durabolin). It
contained a laughably low weekly dose of 50 mg. Today, athletes take the same active ingredient several times a week with 250 mg. Protein preparations did not yet exist, and strong anabolic steroids, commonly used today, were still completely unknown. Compared to the present day, our use of anabolic steroids could be described as very small—no athlete today would expect success from such ridiculous amounts. It is also more likely that they caused a placebo effect." Journalist Wendy Leigh in her scandalous book "Arnold: An Unauthorized Biography" (Premiéra, 1991) claims that Marnul did indeed tell Arnold about steroids, then offered them to him, and Arnold took them. According to Leigh, it was injectable Primobolan and tablet Dianabol.
Marnul was preceded in passing away by his colleague from Graz, Karl Kainrath (1942 - 2020). Marnul himself, the founder of bodybuilding in Austria and the first coach of Arnold Schwarzenegger, passed away on February 6, 2023, at the age of almost 94. Arnold immediately tweeted a memory of how he was assigned to write an essay in school. Arnold saw a guy in glasses bench press a record weight, so he described a man from the neck up resembling a professor who lifted 190 kg. The class laughed, but Arnold's interest in weightlifting was not just a joke. When he and his friends met Kurt in the summer, he was very kind, even though they were small guys learning to lift weights, and he was the Austrian champion. "He was the leader of our little weightlifting clan, set an example for us, and gave us training schedules," Arnold concludes.
