I stopped by the Orleans early yesterday (Thursay) to say hello to some old lifting friends and ended up in the Showroom seeing various parts of fhe Jr. Olympia (bodybuilding classic, and physique) and I can assure one and all that anything to do with the NPC/IFBB is far from dead.
The showroom holds approximately 800 seats (a great venue for a contest such as this) and at times it appeared that every seat was occupied with fans coming and going as specific events began and ended.
And this Jr.Oly Contest started at 0800 and was still going on when I left the Orleans at 1630 which means that the contender list was in the many hundreds.
I only saw small parts of fhe contest throughout the day as I was too damn occupied helping old friends get organized and down to the pool and to the buffet and getting the kids into "IT" whcih I didn't think was a good idea, but one grownup went in with them in the event tht anyone got hysterical .........
I did notice that the majority of the Oly AMteur contenders were foreigners and mostly from Soouth Amrerica and a few from France and throughout Europe.
And while there were five classses within the bodybuilding event, only three received IFBB Pro Cards and only the super looked to have the potential to compete pro-wise.
Bodybuilding contests are very boring unless you know the contenders so I didn't pay too much attention to the results and will leave that up to Ron.
I ran into Bob and Solomon and Dr. Tony Hiuge and others whom GetBiggers most likely have never heardof but the doc was the only one who had the time to join in a conversation and I will say that I did enjoy that brief discussion.
Some of his guys were competing, but I have no idea how they placed.
I left before the event ended .... but it did appear to be a major success financially with a great number of contenders.
I also took a look inside the "Press Conference' which was this year held within the arena and it also looked like every chair was occupied.
So thiis Oly week had a great start-off and the smart guys expect to have 65,000+ attending the Oly Expo Friday and Sturday.