When I was watching the webcast last night and the guys were all posing individually (I fell asleep before the comparisons), almost all the competitors looked to be fairly dry and in pretty good shape. However, when I go back and look at the actual pictures, I can tell that a lot of them were not very well conditioned. Did anyone else notice the same thing? I guess maybe it is just because the pics are higher resolution. For example, I actually thought Cedric looked pretty good last night on the webcast, but today when I looked at the pics I was surprised to see how out of shape he was.
There is a reason - because in video, you look at the competitor at his best, when he does the perfect pose. In pictures, depending on the photographer, some of them take 30 pics at a time. Obviously, only about 5-6 of them are going to be good, the others are them getting into position, into the perfect pose.
With the Olympia, in the dire to be the first online, you get the good with the bad. And many of the pics shown are just average instead of the best ones.
Hence, they they say you need to be there to judge correctly.