Lee Labrada interview >
What are your thoughts on the direction of professional bodybuilding since 1990? It seems like that year could have been a breakthrough year for bodybuilding if the IFBB had continued instituting drug testing. Who knows, maybe bodybuilding would have been one of the sports in the Olympic Games next year in Greece instead of being shut out indefinitely.
It could have been a breakthrough year for the professional ranks. I will tell you that on the amateur level, I think that there have been great strides made by the IFBB and the sport has become more popular and has been accepted in more countries through the efforts of Ben Weider and Rafael Santoja and the top IFBB officials.
On the professional level, I think that we missed the boat. I think that we had a real opportunity to clean up the sport and make the sport more appealing to the public. There will the pundits that say, "Well, we don't care about what the general public thinks". Well, if that's the case, then don't complain about the prize money never going up, don't complain that there aren't more endorsement opportunities in the mainstream available for professional bodybuilders, etc. Because, at the end of the day, to popularize the sport, it's going to have to be a sport that the public buys into as a legitimate sport. The rampant use of anabolic substances in the sport today is just crazy. It's really gotten worse.
Where do you think it's going to go?
Well, I think that unless the IFBB comes in and does something about it, it's just going to be status quo. Essentially, you're just going to have these professional bodybuilders taking their physiques to whatever levels possible to whatever pharmacology is available at the time regardless of health consequences.
