Off the beach and into the dungeon. warning actual history

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Well,'' Ziegler replied, pointing first to the skull, then to the helmet. ''He used to wear that.''

Ziegler also collected guns and knives and weapons of all sorts, but, Goldman remembers: ''He was a good man, and he only wanted to help. But it`s like his patriotic expression to help the athletes of America got bastardized into this whole drug epidemic, this drug war between countries and athletes.'' Ziegler became aware of the latest drug in sport two years after the Olympics in Helsinki, at the 1954 world weight-lifting championships in Vienna. He was there as the U.S. team`s doctor, and one night over drinks in an Austrian watering hole, his Soviet counterpart admitted that his country`s lifters were taking testosterone. On his return to the States, Ziegler tested it on himself, on coach Hoffman and on some lifters at Hoffman`s Barbell Club in York, Pa., but immediately he was frightened by what he clearly saw as its dangerous side effects. He turned then to a pharmaceutical company, worked with it to develop a synthetic steroid and in 1958 helped introduce Dianabol to an unsuspecting world. Its prescribed use was to aid burn victims, but almost immediately it was also put to use at Hoffman`s club.

Three lifters there were given the pill by Ziegler, who didn`t tell them what they were taking, and soon the three developed into national champions. Their success was credited publicly to isometric contraction-a training method once as fashionable as the Hula-Hoop-but, inevitably, their real secret came to be known. ''People saw these changes occuring in lifters who were making gains out of proportion to what was expected. That caused speculation,'' Terry Todd recalls.

Todd is now a senior lecturer in kinesiology at the University of Texas, but in the 1960s he was a competitive lifter much exposed to steroids. ''For a while,'' he says, ''people were put off the trail by isometric contraction, but that wasn`t doing it. Others understood after being told by lifters who were using steroids, and out the ripples went from lifter to lifter, from town to town. Here was a real wonder drug.''

''Back then,'' Goldman adds, ''drugs were in, and the steroid athlete was a hero. It was sort of a cult thing, and by the early `60s, the whole pipeline had largely started. A lot of times the athletes didn`t even know what they were being given. They were just given a set of pills.''

''That was also about the time a few football players started to experiment with lifting,'' Todd adds. ''Until this period, that had been actively resisted (by coaches who felt it would make their athletes too muscle-bound and less flexible). Naturally (the football players) went to lifters for advice on lifting and other things. Steroids were one of the other things lifters advised them on, so as people turned to lifting-which in its own way is a wonder drug that makes dramatic improvement possible-it turned out there was another secret within this secret.

''Then (the spread) occurred like all other kinds of social change. Dramatically in certain pockets, slowly in others. I knew high schools back in the `60s where teams were using these drugs and not knowing what they were taking. They were given out like salt tablets. The coaches just knew they made you stronger and bigger. That`s all they needed to know.''

That was all the athletes needed to know as well, yet while they loaded up on this new wonder drug, sports officials concentrated their attentions elsewhere. Amphetamines were fashionable in the `60s until a pair of cyclists died while using them, and everyone learned the lesson that would become a slogan: Speed kills. The next concern was marijuana and, eventually, cocaine, but steroids were blissfully ignored as they relentlessly wove their way through athletics.

In 1972, at the Summer Games in Munich, U.S. discus thrower Jay Sylvester surveyed his Olympic teammates and learned that a full 68 percent of them had used steroids in their preparation. In 1976, at the Summer Games in Montreal, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) tested for them for the first time, and eight weight lifters were disqualified for using the drug. In 1980, at the Summer Games in Moscow, no positive drug tests were announced, but by then many athletes were skirting those tests by taking pure (and not-yet-banned)

testosterone. (A survey taken after those Olympics estimated that 20 percent of the 5,353 male and female athletes who competed in them had used the male hormone.) In 1983 Todd wrote tellingly in Sports Illustrated on the widespread use of steroids in athletics; four Canadian weight lifters, on their way home from the world championships in Moscow, were caught at the Montreal airport with 22,515 capsules of steroids and 414 vials of testosterone they said they had bought from Eastern Bloc athletes. And at the Pan American Games in Caracas, 19 athletes tested positive for drug use, and a dozen Americans fled Venezuela before they competed and could be tested. And in 1984 at the Summer Games in Los Angeles, there were 11 more positive drug tests, with at least nine involving steroids.

Still, even as this evidence accumulated, the steroid problem was inexplicably, conveniently and conventionally ignored by most until Johnson`s much-publicized exposure in Seoul. One man who did take notice was John Ziegler, the grandfather of it all, and as the time passed between his creation`s introduction in 1958 and his own death in 1983, he retreated to his retirement home in Olney, Md., and came to be a virtual recluse. As with the scientists who split the atom, he knew better than any what he had unleashed upon the world.

''I wish to God now I`d never done it. I`d like to go back and take that whole chapter out of my life,'' Ziegler told Todd shortly before his death.

''Steroids were such a big secret at first, and that added to the hunger the lifters and football players had to get ahold of them. I honestly believe that if I`d told people back then that rat manure would make them strong, they`d have eaten rat manure. What I failed to realize until it was too late was that most of the lifters had such obsessive personalities. To them, if two tablets were good, four would be better.''

''(Ziegler) was, as I said, a very patriotic American, and he saw in Vienna that the Eastern European countries were going to use the drug as a political ploy,'' recalls Goldman, who befriended Ziegler in the last six years of his life. ''So he went to work on them (steroids) out of patriotism. Remember, back then it was the age of the Cold War, and Americans used to win everything. They dominated. All the guys at York were champion athletes. America was the mecca, and he saw this as a way of helping America retain that level. All he saw were all these other countries trying to make a move. He never saw happening what did happen.

''He blamed himself for that situation when, of course, if he hadn`t done it, someone else would have. The Eastern Bloc was doing it first. It was something that would have filtered down, but he was still remorseful. He did feel as if it was his fault. He was real frustrated.

''I spoke to him the day before he died, and the thing most paramount in his mind was that he brought this thing to the American athlete.''

THE WAR BEGINS (BARELY)

Bob Goldman, a street kid from Brooklyn`s Bedford-Stuyvesant ghetto, is now a graduate of the Chicago College of Osteopathic Medicine, the chief medical officer of the International Body Building Federation, the chairman of (among other bodies) Athletes Against Drug Abuse and the Amateur Athletic Union Sports Medicine Committee and the founder and director of the High Technology Fitness Research Institute on the North Side. But back in 1977, when he first met John Ziegler, he was just a weight lifter, a medical-school aspirant and a champion athlete, mostly in strength sports, listed in ''The Guiness Book of World Records'' for doing 13,500 consecutive situps and 321 consecutive free-standing handstand pushups.

He was, after only a single visit with Ziegler, deeply affected by the older man`s remorse, and as their friendship grew, so did his disdain for anabolic steroids. His attitude was further solidified when, almost concurrently, the person who had taught him to lift died of cancer after taking the drug, and with that he decided to postpone his education and begin to research and speak out against that still widely accepted performance-enhancer.

''Death in the Locker Room: Steroids & Sports'' was finally published in 1984, and as he put it together, Goldman was widely reviled and ridiculed. The medical community, unwilling to accept the opinion of someone who was not a doctor, belittled him, his book and his admittedly anecdotal research, and it declared clearly and vociferously that he was speaking from ignorance. He was challenged, too, in the gyms where he trained and worked and where he found his attitude in the distinct minority. ''What`s the big deal?'' some lifters would ask him.

''We`re just trying to get stronger, and these are just like vitamins,''

still others would declare.

''At the beginning,'' he recalls, ''there was zero respect, and the people I competed with and against were very, very antagonistic. But I was seeing things. I remember guys going into locker rooms and swallowing full bottles (of steroids). I saw guys acting crazy and hostile. Fights in the gym. . . . Guys who were calm before-sweet, nice, courteous guys-when they went on this stuff, they`d turn into maniacs and literally try to kill each other for no reason.

''People who were talking about (drugs) then didn`t know what was going on. You had medical people who had no idea about these athletes, about this subculture, about how these drugs were being used-you had these medical people going so far as to say, `These drugs don`t enhance athletic performance. It`s ridiculous.` The athletes knew they worked, so when these same medical people came back later and said, `Hey, these drugs are also going to hurt you,` the athletes went, `Hey, you lied to us before.` ''

''The American College of Sports Medicine tried to lie for a while-they said it was a placebo,'' Todd adds. ''I think that was a serious error. It led to a lot of distrust, athletes not putting faith in doctors. So when they were told the truth, the athletes didn`t believe them.''

''Some in the sports medicine community suffered irreparable harm,''

concludes Penn State`s Yesalis, who now hopes to do the first scientific study on the long-term effect of steroids on otherwise healthy males. ''I`ve talked to a number of athletes who say, `Yeah, you`re the guys who said they didn`t work.` ''

So even though Goldman and Todd and others expressed profound fears about steroids, their warnings were ignored as the drug`s use increased. Goldman recalls lifters who simply stole prescription pads from doctors` offices and then wrote out orders to fill their needs. Todd once interviewed a former world champion turned drug dealer who in 1985 told him that ''there must be at least 200 pharmacists in the U.S. dealing steroids on the black market.''

The border town of Tijuana, Mexico, was and still is another source of the drug; it can be bought there without prescription and paid for by credit card. There, for example, a bottle of Dianabol could be bought for $5 and then sold to a dealer for something under $20, then passed on to a user for approximately $50. Those dealers and others also openly advertised their wares in strength magazines and in fliers sent to gyms across the country, and by simply sending a money order to the designated post office box, one could purchase a full line of steroids and-if needed-syringes.

This easy accessibility inevitably and inexorably drew more athletes into the drug`s pipeline, and the more familiar they became with the drug`s peculiarities, the more easily they were able to beat the tests designed to catch them. ''The criminal is the creative genius. The detective, merely the critic,'' the novelist G.K. Chesterton wrote many years ago, and that characterization proved accurate as the skirmishes between drug users and drug detectors grew themselves to be Olympian competitions.

First there were the tests for steroids. The athletes neutralized them by taking pure testosterone. The IOC responded by adding testosterone to its list of some 3,700 banned substances. The athletes reacted by finding drugs that would mask their use of steroids, testosterone and other performance-enhancing substances. The IOC then banned those maskers and unveiled advanced, state-of- the-art testing machines. The athletes just began testing themselves and learning when they had to stop using a drug to keep it from popping up in their urine. ''The athletes,'' declares the USOC`s Voy, ''know more than you do, know more than I do about doping and drugs in sports.''

They also knew-only too well-that they would further benefit from benign neglect, the naivete of countless trainers and coaches, of image-conscious professional leagues and amateur sports federations. There were, for one example, no positive tests announced after the 1983 Track & Field

Championships in Helsinki. Rumor had it that all samples were dumped down a sink. Similar rumors surfaced at its 1987 championships in Rome, where Ben Johnson set a 100-meter world record of 9.83 seconds and skeptical journalists wondered aloud about the lack of even a single positive. ''If you want one, we`ll get you one,'' Primo Nebiolo, head of the International Amateur Athletics Federation, said in response to that skepticism, and days later Swiss 1,500-meter-runner Sandra Gasser was trotted out as the designated victim.

''I know for a fact, and other athletes also know about the drug problem in our sport,'' U.S. sprinter Carl Lewis said on British television after those Rome championships. ''We`re always running away from the drug problem. We`re sitting back and not doing anything. It really is bad in our sport, worse than ever. There are gold medalists in this meet who are definitely on drugs. I feel a strange air about these championships. A lot of people are coming out of nowhere, and they are just running unbelievable, and I just don`t think they are doing it without drugs.''

''There are attempts to suppress (drug test) results. I`m not going to give you facts and figures, but athletes know it occurs, and we have to admit it,'' Voy says.

Even now, major-league baseball does not test its players for steroid use, nor does the National Hockey League or the National Basketball Association. The NCAA began drug testing at selected championships and bowl games three years ago, and after two such tests (the only results available for this article), steroids were found in 32 of 2,470 football players`

samples. Finally, the National Football League decided only last October to make steroid users liable for the same punishments that befall users of other illegal drugs-and only after the Johnson incident. The league, in making its announcement, said its tests showed only 6 percent of its players used anabolic steroids.

Statistics, as the old saying goes, lie, and few if any believe the figures trotted out by either the NFL or the NCAA. Steve Courson, a former Tampa Bay tackle and steroid user, wrote in Sports Illustrated in the wake of the NFL`s claims, ''My educated guess is that close to 50 percent of the linemen use steroids, which right there would be about 15 percent of all players.'' Terry Todd recalls hearing former Redskin placekicker Mark Moseley doing commentary on the 6 percent figure on National Public Radio. ''He said,'' recalls Todd, '' `Yes, that might possibly apply to kickers, but not other groups (of players) I`m familiar with.` ''

''One of my colleagues said if they found 6 percent positive, they only tested 6 percent of the players,'' Penn State`s Yesalis says. Then he chuckles. ''I think you can come to some conclusions in a roundabout way. If you look at the average size of NFL linemen and college linemen 20 years ago and then look at them today, you see a 50- to 60-pound increase in size with a concomitant decrease in body fat. And I`ll tell you, as a scientist, we as a species have not evolved that fast.''

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 Bob Hoffman was really the heart and soul of York Barbell Club. He, almost alone, supported the sport of Olympic weightlifting in the United States for nearly fifty years. True, he had a motive: money. Whenever a York lifter excelled, it benefited his pocketbook very directly. But the fact remains that without his backing there would never have been such an influx of champions such as Grimek, Stanko, Terpak, Spellman, Terlazzo, Bradford, Davis, Berger, Vinci, Schemansky, Grippaldi, Puleo, Bednarski, Garcy, Marcy, and so many more who wore the maroon and white of the YBC. And for hundreds of others who lived vicariously through the exploits of the champion lifters, he provided another sort of experience.

Hoffman was, by any standard of measure, odd and eccentric. Some believed this was because of all the money he had accumulated, but according to his own stories and from accounts of those who knew him before he became wealthy, he was always odd and eccentric.

Despite his affluence, he did little in the way of enjoyment. He never really went on a true vacation; his only trips were to weightlifting meets or conventions to sell more products. He wore the same clothes for months on end, often not bothering to have them cleaned. His one passion, other than counting money, was dancing the polka. Every weekend when he was not at some contest too far away to get home, he could be found at the Thomasville Inn, which was owned and operated by his common-law wife Alda, dancing until closing. It was the most important part of the week to him, and he would often fly back from some exotic foreign city such as Paris or Rome to be at the Thomasville Inn. 

Hoffman made many claims about himself. He was, of course, the Father of American Weightlifting, hence the nickname “Daddy Hoffman.” He actually liked being called Daddy by the lifters, for this reinforced his right to the title. I didn’t know this until I accidentally slipped and called him Daddy to his face one day. He smiled and continued babbling, so I knew I was on safe ground. He was also the greatest Chinese food eater outside of China, the World’s Healthiest Man, and had once been crowned the World’s Strongest Man. There were more, but you get the point.

Few people bothered to challenge these claims, but I found out how he got the title of the of world’s strongest man. Hoffman was never very strong. In fact, he never was able to put 300 pounds over his head, much to his chagrin since nearly every lifter at the York Barbell in the early forties could clean and jerk that much: Terlazzo, Grimek, Stanko, Terpak and even Bachtell who was a lightweight. So he decided he would become a professional weightlifter and not have to be bothered with those amateurs. He set up a contest to determine who was the strongest professional in the country. Only one other person challenged him, a lifter from Erie, Pennsylvania. On the day of the contest, held at the York Y, a blizzard blocked all the roads. Hoffman became the strongest man in the world, professional division, by default. As time went by, the professional part was dropped, and he sucked on this title till the end of his life.

Without a doubt, the absolutely strangest claim I ever heard come out of his mouth, or anyone’s mouth for that matter, happened during a health food convention in Washington, D.C. Tommy Suggs and I were putting on a lifting demonstration in the York booth when Hoffman showed up and went into one of his endless diatribes about himself, his favorite subject by far. Tommy and I stopped our lifting, for the audience was made up of older men and women who were more interested in what Hoffman had to say than watching us do something they could never possibly do. They seemed transfixed by his droning. Perhaps it was because of his age, but they hung on every word and there were plenty to hang on, believe me. He went on and on about how healthy he was, how he ran a hundred miles a week and was in the midst of a two week fast. Tommy and I looked at one another and smiled, thinking we had heard it all I before. Then he came out with the kicker. He told the assembly he had the world’s most perfectly developed penis. Now Tommy and I exchanged stunned expressions and I whispered, “Did I hear him right?” Tommy’s hearing wasn’t all that keen and he answered softly, “I’m not sure.” It just didn’t seem possible that he would say such a thing to a group of older people, but our doubts were quickly resolved when he repeated himself just in case he had not been heard clearly the first time. As amazed as I was at his ridiculous statement, the reaction of the crowd was even more astounding. Not a soul blinked, frowned, smiled, or showed the slightest reaction at hearing such an absurd remark. It was as if it were totally natural for this old man to say such a thing. After all, he was the world’s healthiest man, so I guess it was logical for him to have the world’s most perfectly developed penis. I half expected one of them to ask him to whip it out. I’m sure he would have been more than willing to comply.

The only tangible item that Hoffman spent his money on was a new car every year. Terpak and Mike Dietz also bought new cars every year, for this was a status game among the higher echelon of the company. Terpak and Dietz always went for the fancy Cadillacs, but Hoffman preferred Lincolns. He said they had larger interiors and since he was a big man, they fit him better. For once this was true; he was indeed a big man, standing 6?4? and weighing 270 pounds. His cars also served as his office. He did have an office in his home in Dover, but didn’t have one at the York Barbell. His former office had been given over to the art department. Every night when he was in town, he would go to the YBC P.O. box to get the mail. Then he would strip all the cash from the incoming orders and throw the letters in his back seat. Which, naturally, resulted in more than a few orders being lost. Periodically, Terpak, Dietz or John Terlazzo would clean out his back seat and floorboard and attempt to fill the late orders.

Hoffman was always on the move, going to conventions, weightlifting meets, AAU meetings, exhibitions, and talks to various groups. He always wanted someone to go with him, primarily to have someone to talk to for he dearly loved the sound of his own voice. One of the first lessons at the York Barbell that any new person needed to learn was that when Hoffman asked him to go alone on some trip, he should always insist on driving. For there was yet another title he could rightfully lay claim to, although he never mentioned this one: he was the world’s worst driver. I was unaware of this fact until I took a drive with him to Philadelphia and it cost me a few years off my life.

He asked me to accompany him to an AAU meeting so I could cast a vote for one of his five registered clubs. He kept five so he could stack the votes for whatever he wanted passed. The clubs were all registered under the names of his various companies: York Barbell, York Foundry, Hoffman Labs, Swiss Automatic and Dover Advertising. The last being a shell company supposedly run by Alda which allowed her to pocket a tidy sum each month for all the ads placed in Muscular Development and Strength & Health. Of course, she never did any such thing. It was just a way to keep more money in the family and pay a few less taxes.

I was rather flattered that he had asked me to go along, but when I mentioned this to Grimek, he laughed and said gruffly, “Hell Starr, he doesn’t need your vote. He already has the whole committee in his back pocket. He just wants some company.” Which I discovered was true. But I really didn’t mind for what benefited the YBC also benefited me and my fellow lifters, and I was also curious to see what went on at the meeting. The Middle Atlantic AAU was the most powerful, in terms of weightlifting, in the country.

What everyone failed to mention was the fact that I should drive. This was not an oversight on my fellow workers part. It was all part of the initiation process. He picked me up at the office at 3:45. I knew that the meeting did not start until 7, but figured we were going to stop on the way for a leisurely meal. That would be normal behavior, but I soon learned that Hoffman was not a normal human being.

We roared out of the YBC parking lot like the devil was after us. Up Market Street we flew. Red lights had no meaning for him whatsoever. After zipping through the third one in a row, I mentioned that he was running red lights, thinking that he forgot his glasses, was preoccupied and had missed them or was color blind. It was none of the above. “After all” he replied, “they looked yellow to me.” And stepped on the gas.

Yes, in a pig’s eye, I thought, tightening my seat belt and locking one hand on the dash. Sometimes he was forced to stop because of a line of traffic in front of him. This irritated him to no end. He would grumble under his breath, rock back and forth and gun his engine. If the car in front of him didn’t move the instant the light changed, he blared his horn. On one occasion, when the car in front didn’t move quickly enough, he passed him on the right shoulder. Now I knew I was in a car with a madman.

Once we cleared York, he really let the Lincoln air out. I only checked the speedometer once; it was tickling ninety. He passed on curves, hills, anywhere his heart desired. If he ran one car off the road, he ran off half a dozen. They would shout and blare their horns, but he didn’t seem to mind.

When we finally pulled to a stop in downtown Philadelphia, my knuckles were white and my sphincter had chewed off all the buttons on the passenger seat. I was in a daze. Hoffman checked his watch, smiled and said proudly, “Made good time.”

Now I understood his insanity. It was a game to see if he could better his driving time from his last trip. At that moment I vowed to either drive home or catch a bus. We were over two hours early for the meeting. We sat around a lobby, doing nothing. I was starved, but had no idea where I was so waited it out. Surely he would feed me sometime during the night. After a rather short, uneventful meeting in which I was not even called upon to vote on anything, we left. I quickly offered to drive. Well, actually it was more in the form of begging. I told him I had never driven such a fine car and would really appreciate it if he would allow me to do so. He agreed rather readily and I gathered that breaking the time record from Philly to York wasn’t that important.

It wasn’t, because we made a stop for food. He directed me to a small carry-out, reeking of grease in South Philly. He bought us two huge cheese steaks, which we ate on the road. This, I found out, was standard procedure for any trip to Philly. Cheese steaks were cheap and you got lots of food. Right up Hoffman’s alley.

On the ride to Philly, he hadn’t talked much for he was too intent on his version of driving, but on the ride home he never shut up. It was his habit to talk about what he was currently writing about at the time. Unfortunately for me, he happened to be writing about problems of the digestive tract, so he went on and on about impacted bowels and the amount of feces found in the human body; none of which was helping me digest the greasy food I had just eaten.

That’s when I learned to get him to talk about his younger years. As long as the subject was Hoffman, he didn’t mind switching topics. Some of it was quite interesting. I asked how he got into physical culture in the first place and he said he got bored while living in western Pennsylvania, where his father was employed building dams, so he started running. At four years of age he used to run around and around a tennis court near his home. He of course exaggerated how far he ran, but this I took with a grain of salt. It was common knowledge around the YBC that you always divided any number he told you in half when it came to his exploits and doubled any number which dealt with money. His stories were certainly less offensive than his talk of excrement.

When I reported his wild driving the next day, everyone got a big laugh out of it. “Welcome to the club,” Suggs said. “You’ll learn to always drive when you travel with him or suffer the consequences.”

Which is exactly what I did from then on. Except for one trip. He had just bought a new Lincoln and was in a hurry, so he refused to get out of the driver’s seat. Reluctantly, I got in, hoping the Philly trip had been an unusual experience since we were going to a health food convention in Allentown. Hopefully, there wasn’t any driving record from York to Allentown to challenge. No such luck. Once again he broke the speed limit down Market Street, ignored all the red lights, then shot across the road in front of two oncoming cars into the parking lot of a Dairy Freeze. He asked me if I wanted anything, but I said no for it was only 4 o’clock. He went in, came out carrying a hot dog, dripping with relish, mustard and catsup along with a chocolate sundae. My job was to hold the sundae while he gulped down the hot dog. A good portion of the relish, mustard and catsup made its way to his shirt and suit coat, but he made short order of the hot dog, then disposed of the sundae just as quickly. It was as if he hadn’t eaten in a month.

Once he finished the sundae, he went back to driving with vengeance, the purpose being to scare the daylights completely out of me. I have to say he succeeded nicely.

He never stayed within fifteen miles of the speed limit, and on one occasion passed a semi on a long, steep hill when a car was clearly coming from the other direction. If the truck hadn’t had air brakes, he would have been toast. When we stopped in front of the high school, my legs were shaking and I wondered if I was going to be able to lift anything. That’s why he’d brought me along; to give a lifting demonstration. Then he was to deliver a talk on nutrition.

I didn’t lift much since the audience was all older folks and couldn’t tell the difference between a 200-pound press and a 300-pound effort. Hoffman took the stage and damned if he didn’t surprise me again. He actually stood in front of all those people in this high school auditorium and told them that he hadn’t eaten anything but two of his high protein bars a day for the past two weeks. Oh yes, he also drank lots of water to clean out his system. And ran a few hundred miles a week. He was so sincere that if I hadn’t seen him gulp down all that junk food only an hour earlier I think I would have believed him. Either he was the world’s greatest liar or his brain was so far gone he actually believed what he was saying.

Once again, he allowed me to drive home; it seemed going home was never as urgent as getting to where he was going. This was a new Lincoln, equipped with extremely sensitive power brakes. I had never driven any car with brakes like this and every time I stopped, I damn near sent him flying through the windshield. He would pop his head against the dash over and over. “Sorry,” I mumbled, “I’m not used to these power brakes.”

He didn’t say anything until after the fourth time I sent him flying forward, then he grumbled, “Well after all, Bill, I’d think you’d have the hang of it by now.” For the rest of the drive, he kept both hands planted firmly on the dashboard.

Eventually, I did learn to just barely touch the brake pedal, but he still kept himself braced, just in case. I was still a bit flabbergasted by his remarks about fasting and was dying to ask him why he told such a blatant lie. But I wasn’t sure how he might take the question and certainly didn’t want to offend the man who was responsible for feeding me and my family. When we got back to York, he had me pull into that same Dairy Freeze where he bought another hot dog and sundae. I knew then and there that any idea of broaching the subject was out of the question. He was totally mad.

I had one adventure while driving that helped to elevate my status with him tremendously. We were coming back from a convention in St. Louis. We had left his car at Baltimore Washington International airport and I was driving it back to York on I-83. We were almost to the Mason-Dixon line when smoke started rolling out of the hood. I pulled over, got the hood open and saw there was a fire on the engine. A fire of some size. Hoffman was beside me by this time. He just stood there looking at the flames. “Well after all, I wonder how that started?

I could have cared less how it started. What concerned me was being stranded on the highway late at night. I snatched up some grass from beside the shoulder, thinking it was green, but it was dry. When I stuffed it on the flames, they erupted even higher. Hoffman still did nothing but talk. “Why Bill, that didn’t seem like a good idea.”

I ran down the embankment, dug out some dirt and packed this on the fire. That did the trick. In minutes, the fire was out. I wasn’t sure if the car would run, but it did and got us home safely. For the rest of the drive, all he could do was talk about how I put that fire out. “That was really smart of you Bill. You saved my nice car.”

For several months after the event, whenever he saw me he would tell whoever he was talking to about how my quick action saved his nice car. He never did mention the part about me putting dry grass on the flames; and for once I was happy that he had this way of eliminating any fact that might interfere with a good story. The bad part about the episode from my standpoint was that he would also talk about it every time I was about to try an attempt on the platform when he was announcing. It did little for my concentration.

There were a few times when he preferred to drive himself, usually when he had some meeting that he didn’t want Dietz or Terpak to know about. He had to do many things behind their backs because they would often try to prevent him from doing anything that utilized the companies’ money, even though it was his money. On this particular trip, he was negotiating to buy a candy company and had driven by himself to look over the plant. It wass located in northwestern Maryland and he was coming home on the back roads. Pennsylvania back roads were built following cow paths, and are very hazardous with lots of sharp curves, blind hills and no shoulders. Even those who used them regularly knew to drive cautiously. Not Hoffman. He kept his foot to the gas pedal anyway. On this night, he met with an unexpected obstacle – a long bed truck was stalled alongside the road.

Hoffman sent his Lincoln full-tilt into the back of the trailer and he was taken by ambulance to York County Hospital. It’s really a wonder the collision didn’t kill him, but for all his shortcomings, he was a sturdy S.O.B. He had tubes dangling out of him and he was barely able to stand, but when Alda came to visit him, he persuaded her to take him out of the hospital and drive him back to the site of the crash. His purpose was to change the automatic speed gauge in his car to the legal limit before the authorities checked it. He had Alda change if from sixty to forty-five, then went back to his hospital bed for three days. The scam worked. When the State Police questioned him, he told them he was only going the limit and if they would check his car, they would find out this was the truth

Anyone who traveled with Hoffman can tell a tale or two about his driving, but no other individual spent more time in a car with Hoffman than Bill March, and he can tell lots of stories. Besides traveling to all the meets with Hoffman, Bill also put on as many as five exhibitions a week during the course of the year. He learned early-on that it was important to get behind the wheel and not let Hoffman drive. But even with this precaution taken care of, there could still be problems.

This is my favorite. Hoffman and March were coming home after a contest one night, traveling on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Hoffman had fallen asleep in the passenger seat. Bill had moved up behind a truck transporting a load of new cars. The cars were positioned in the truck backwards with their headlights towards Bill. All of a sudden Hoffman woke up. He sees those headlights coming directly towards him and lets out a blood-curdling scream that almost caused Bill to run off the road; he thought the old man had seen something he didn’t see. Needless to add, both their hearts got a nice jolt on that night.

Traveling with Daddy Hoffman was always an adventure.

[funk51]

It started on September 18, 1965. The crowd at the Brooklyn Academy of Music waited at the edge of their seats, screaming in anticipation. They clapped their hands, stomped their feet and yelled as loud as their lungs would allow for the blond superstar from California with arms too big to believe. The man they were waiting for was the legendary Larry Scott, and the reason why they were waiting was because this was the night of Joe Weider’s greatest creation. This was the night of the first-ever Mr. Olympia contest.

Larry Scott was the bodybuilding superstar of his day, but by 1963 there were no more worlds to conquer. Scott had already won the Mr. America, Mr. World and Mr. Universe titles; there was little left for him to prove.

Besides proving anything, Scott already had a houseful of trophies and plaques and felt that it was time to move on from bodybuilding and make some money.

Joe Weider recognized the need to keep Larry Scott in bodybuilding and the necessity to force the sport to grow. He created the Mr. Olympia contest to keep all the great Mr. Universe champions active in the sport and to give them the opportunity to earn money from competing. Joe could see that for the sport to succeed in the future, the champions would have to be able to make a living from competing in the sport just like other professional athletes.

Larry Scott indeed won the first Mr. Olympia contest that hot September night in 1965 and repeated as Mr. Olympia again in 1966. He then announced his retirement and the 1967 crown was up for grabs.

In 1967, Sergio Oliva (commonly known as “The Myth”) won the third Mr. Olympia contest in overpowering fashion. People wondered how much better Sergio could get. But better he was! In fact, he was so much better that he won the 1968 Mr. Olympia unopposed. You know true greatness when no one dares to challenge.

Nevertheless, the greatest challenge to Sergio was waiting in the wings, and 1969 commenced the greatest rivalry in the history of bodybuilding. Oliva was challenged by a young Austrian named Arnold Schwarzenegger. In a close battle, Sergio came out on top in 1969. He was now Mr. Olympia three years in a row, but Arnold promised that Sergio would never defeat him again.

Both men trained hard for the following year and in September of 1970, Arnold edged out Sergio to become the third man to hold the Mr. Olympia title. He said he would hold the title until he retired and that he would never be beaten again.

Arnold took the title unopposed in 1971. For the first time, the show was held outside of New York. The Mr. Olympia contest was held in Paris, a week after the NABBA Universe in London. Arnold, with his loyalty 100% behind the IFBB, competed in the Mr. Olympia while other great champions of that year chose to avoid Arnold and compete in the NABBA competition.

In 1972, the Olympia moved to Essen, Germany, where it hosted another epic battle between Sergio and Arnold. Even today, more than 20 years later, people still argue over who should have won. The decision was made by seven judges and, by a four-to-three vote, Arnold held on to his Mr. Olympia title.

In 1973, the contest moved back to New York, and the Big Apple saw Arnold take the title for the fourth consecutive year with a victory over Franco Columbu and Serge Nubret. Most people felt it was an easy win for Arnold, but a huge challenge awaited him for the following year – the emergence of Lou Ferrigno on the pro scene.

Standing 6’5″ and weighing 270 pounds, Lou was the largest competitor that Arnold had ever faced. The show was held in New York at the Felt Forum in Madison Square Garden. Arnold again showed his dominance and won the title for a fifth time, but rumors started to circulate that he was thinking of retiring.

The Mr. Olympia contest moved to South Africa in 1975, forever preserved on film in Pumping Iron. Most people close to Arnold feel the only reason he competed in 1975 was because the contest was being filmed and it could probably aid in kicking off his film career. Arnold won the contest easily and immediately announced his retirement.

In 1976, the contest moved to Columbus, Ohio, with Arnold serving as promoter along with Jim Lorimer. Franco Columbu finally won the Mr. Olympia title after trying for more than five years. It was not an easy victory, for he won by only an eyelash over Frank Zane. After the contest, Columbu announced his retirement while Zane immediately started training for the next year.

The next year, 1977, turned out to be the year of Zane. Frank Zane had promoted himself that way for the 12 months leading up to the contest. He came to Columbus ripped and ready. He felt that no one could match his muscle density and he was right.

Almost like an instant replay, the 1978 show was again held in Columbus and Frank Zane walked away with the title. Frank proved that the Mr. Olympia winner did not necessarily have to be big, as what wins is quality.

In 1979, Zane made it three in a row. Could he go on forever? Would he challenge Arnold’s record of six Olympias in a row? Zane seemed unbeatable, but 1980 would prove to be the most controversial Olympia in history.

In 1980, the contest was held in Australia. The field of competitors was the largest to date, but it was the comeback of one that made the story. Many in the sport had seen Arnold training for weeks before the 1980 Mr. Olympia, but most felt it was for a movie. When Arnold boarded the plane for Australia with the other competitors, they thought he was going to do the TV commentary. Even at the contestants meeting, they thought he was there because he was an IFBB promoter and official. It dawned on them that he was there to compete when his name was called, and he selected a competitor number. Arnold won the Mr. Olympia title for a seventh time in 1980, but to this day, many people still wonder why he came back.

In 1981, Arnold switched back to being a promoter with Jim Lorimer and the contest was again held in Columbus. Not to be outdone by his famous friend, Franco Columbu staged a comeback himself and won the 1981 title in a tight contest.

In 1982, London, England, hosted the show for the first time. Chris Dickerson won the title after finishing second the two previous years. After winning, Dickerson announced his retirement while onstage.

The contest returned to Germany in 1983, but this time it was to Munich, where it was won by the Lion of Lebanon, Samir Bannout. He fought off tough challenges from Mohammed Makkawy from Egypt and newcomer Lee Haney from the USA. Samir had what it takes to be a dominant champion, but no one foresaw the determination of Haney.

In 1984, the event moved back to New York City’s Felt Forum, where it had the highest attendance for the finals (5,000), the highest attendance for prejudging (4,200) and the largest amount of total prize money ($100,000) for any Olympia up to that time. It also featured the largest Mr. Olympia winner, Lee Haney. Haney won weighing 247 pounds at a height of 5’11”. He was big, he was massive and he was cut. Also, he was unbeatable.

In 1985, the show was held in Belgium for the first time. Haney was dominant again, fighting off the challenges of Albert Beckles and Rich Gaspari. It was now two and counting for Lee. Many people felt that the Lee Haney onstage in the 1986 rendition in Columbus might have been the greatest Mr. Olympia ever. Lee took his third straight crown and began setting his sights on Arnold’s record.

In 1987, the Mr. Olympia contest moved to Sweden, but the first-place result was the same. Haney was head-and-shoulders above all the others. He had now won four in a row, and Arnold’s record was definitely within his reach.

In 1988, Los Angeles was the host city of the Olympia. The Universal Amphitheater was jammed by 6,000 who came to see if Lee Haney could continue in his quest of becoming the greatest Mr. Olympia ever. With prize money at its highest level, $150,000, Haney again won easily making it five straight times. For the third year in a row, Rich Gaspari placed second.

The next year brought the Mr. Olympia to Rimini, Italy, on the beautiful Adriatic coast. This would prove to be Haney’s toughest defense, as he had to fight off the challenges of Lee Labrada and Vince Taylor. For the first time, people doubted Haney’s dominance and many people said that he was lucky to win. But win he did, and in doing so tied Arnold’s record of six consecutive Mr. Olympia victories.

In 1990, 4,400 people packed Chicago’s Arie Crown Theatre. Prize money hit $200,000 for the first time ever as Haney tried to make it seven in a row. If 1989 was tough for Haney, 1990 was the year he almost lost. After two rounds, he was behind by two points, but rallied in the posing round and posedown to beat Lee Labrada and Shawn Ray. Haney now had seven consecutive Mr. Olympia titles.

Orlando, Florida, was the site of the 1991 Mr. Olympia. Haney was going for eight in a row but, for the first time, he was up against a man who was the same height (5’11”) and weight in 245-pound Dorian Yates, the Beast of Britain. Four points separated them after two rounds, but Haney pulled away in rounds three and four to seize his eighth championship in a row.

In 1992, the Mr. Olympia contest moved to Helsinki, Finland. A new Mr. Olympia would be crowned that year because Lee Haney had decided to retire after a record-setting eight consecutive victories. The contest was close after the first round between the U.S. National Champion of 1991, Kevin Levrone, and the ’91 Mr. Olympia runner-up, Dorian Yates. But after the first round, Yates started pulling away and won in convincing fashion.

A new Mr. Olympia was crowned, but did a new era begin?

Nothing could stop the amazing Yates in 1993 as he rocked the scales at a record 257 pounds in Atlanta. Even runner-up Flex Wheeler called him “untouchable”. Yates certainly seemed set for a long reign in the manner of other great Mr. Olympias.

However, the Brit endured a horrendous year in 1994. In early March, he severely damaged his left rotator cuff, and then, later in the month, he tore his left quad. He battled his way through, but with the Olympia less than nine weeks away, he tore his left biceps. Displaying true blood and guts, even that injury could not end Yates’ Olympic dream. He duly arrived in Atlanta to take his third Sandow statuette, but questions were raised as to what was previously thought to be his invincibility.

If doubts were raised about Yates’s reign, he didn’t hear, or heed them. He returned to Atlanta in ’95 to score a straight-firsts victory in what many rate his best-ever form. Kevin Levrone hulked into second place and a new threat emerged in this sport in the 270-pound Nasser El Sonbaty. Not that Yates was the only Mr. O on stage that night, as in a unique ceremony, for the first time ever, all nine men who had so far won the Olympia crown assembled onstage to pay homage to the contest’s creator, Joe Weider.

In 1996, after a three-year tenure, the Olympia left Atlanta and moved to Chicago. In the Windy City, Yates, more streamlined than we’ve ever seen him, cruised to victory, closely followed by Shawn Ray and Kevin Levrone. It was the Brit’s fifth victory, and, as in ’94, doubts about his invincibility began to surface.

In 1997, the Mr. Olympia road show arrived in Long Beach to celebrate the 33rd rendition of bodybuilding’s ultimate contest. Total prize money was $285,000, first place was worth $110,000, and bodybuilders were recognized as professional athletes in the truest sense of the word. The Mr. Olympia contest, which only Joe Weider had the imagination to create, was firmly established as bodybuilding’s show of shows.

Dorian Yates was now going for six Olympia titles in a row. Could he make it six in a row? Would he make a run at Haney’s record of eight in a row? It was a hard fought contest. Nasser El Sonbaty came in at his best condition to date and pushed Dorian hard. In the end, Dorian took the title for the sixth time, but there were some that felt Nasser was better. It would set up an interesting confrontation for 1998 since Dorian announced moments after winning the title that he would be coming back to compete for a seventh title.

What most people did not know was that Dorian suffered a torn triceps in training a few months before the show. Being the tough champion that he is, he said nothing and competed. After the contest, he had surgery to repair the muscle tear, but it will prevent him from competing in 1998.

In 1998, the Olympia will move to Madison Square Garden in New York City and will see the crowning of a new Mr. Olympia. Although a new champion will wear the coveted title of the “World’s Best Bodybuilder”, will he be cast in the shadow of Dorian Yates who may or may not return in 1999?

Editor’s Note – Courtesy of Peter McGough, Editor-in-Chief, FLEX

His senses were reeling, battling to come to terms with the scene unfolding around him. He stood next to precontest favorite Flex Wheeler at the top of the ramp erected at The Theater at New York’s Madison Square Gardens, gazing out over the seething maelstrom of a sellout crowd of 5,600. They were in an uproar as a chant of “RON-NIE! RON-NIE!” filled the auditorium, as it had throughout the day. He, Wheeler and the 5,600 were waiting to hear IFBB Pro Division Chairman Wayne DeMilia make the second-place announcement at the 1998 Mr. Olympia contest. The man not called would go down in history as the best bodybuilder in the world, the successor to Dorian Yates (retired), Lee Haney, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Sergio Oliva, et al.

Hushing the crowd, DeMilia purred into the microphone: “In second place …”, DeMilia, who makes the Marquis de Sade seem like Mary Poppins on Valium, then cruelly paused a full 10 seconds before barking, “… Flex Wheeler!”

The crowd erupted into celebration as the man who was supposed to be the last one standing went the other way, crashing face down to the ground in shock. Could it be that a guy who finished “dead last” in his first Olympia back in 1992, who placed ninth at the 1997 rendition, who had to constantly remind people that he was not the bodybuilder called Ron Coleman, had just entered the ranks of bodybuilding immortality? It could, and the biggest baddest cop in Texas began to sob uncontrollably, as at 10:41 PM on Saturday, October 10, 1998, 34-year old Ronnie Coleman became only the 10th Mr. Olympia in the contest’s 33-year existence.

Editor’s Note: – Courtesy of Peter McGough, Editor-in-Chief, FLEX

Like Siegfried and Roy, like abs and thighs, Las Vegas and the Mr. Olympia belong together: Both celebrate excess for the sheer excessive sake of it; both foster a larger-than-life philosophy decreeing that its standout attractions keep getting bigger and bigger and bigger; both revel in illusion and promote the fantasy that “life-changing gains can be yours”, which in truth only a gifted few can attain. So it really was only a matter of time before Joe Weider made the inspired decision to bring his bodybuilding flagship to the gambling capital of the world.

Staging the Mr. Olympia contest in Las Vegas was a spectacular success, for there has never been a more glamorous setting for the sport’s premier contest than the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, and there has never been a greater night for bodybuilding than what occurred there on October 23, 1999. A sold-out 5,000 capacity crowd at the hotel’s Event Center witnessed a thrilling extravaganza that culminated in Ronnie Coleman outmuscling 15 others on the road to Mandalay and his second consecutive Olympia crown, with the only apparent dissenter to the decision being a hyped-up Flex Wheeler.

Editor’s Note: – Courtesy of Jim Schmaltz, Senior Editor, FLEX

How do bring down Ronnie Coleman? Tell him he’s won the Mr. Olympia.

Now for the third time in a row, the world’s greatest body collapsed like a heaving shuddering rag doll after learning he had won the Mr. O title, thus becoming the biggest structure to implode on the Las Vegas Strip since the demolition of the El Rancho resort a few weeks earlier.

Ronnie’s personal annual fall classic, with its sobs of elation and earnest familial embraces, was emblematic of the exposed emotions curdling the atmosphere of the 36th annual Mr. Olympia, held at the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino on Saturday, October 21.

Among Coleman’s competitors, it was a night of repressed rage and quiet smoldering – a gathering of frowning Paul Bunyans who looked as if their favorite ox had just died. If the Mr. O lineup were a rock group, they’d be called the Moody Blues.

[funk51]

In the following interview Dan tells his inspiring story and shares the methods that have helped him to stay in excellent physical shape at age 82.

Anyone even remotely connected with the iron game will remember one of its greatest ambassadors, Dan Lurie. Back in the 40s and 50s, Dan carved a niche for himself as the worlds strongest, most muscular man.

He went on to become arguably bodybuilding's most successful promoter, starting the World Body Building Guild in 1965 as a way to enhance public awareness, and garner respect, for a sport that was, at the time considered an oddity. Along the way, Dan published several health and fitness related magazines, the most popular of these being Muscle Training Illustrated.

From bent pressing with one arm 285lbs, to arm wrestling President Regan, Dan has lived a colorful life, while continually preaching the bodybuilding gospel. Indeed, whether it be through promotion, television, competition, publishing or marketing, Dan took bodybuilding to the masses and helped to transform it from curious spectacle to legitimate sport.

His contribution to bodybuilding should never be forgotten for he truly was, and is, one of its more passionate advocates. In the following interview Dan tells his inspiring story and shares the methods that have helped him to stay in excellent physical shape at age 82.

Q
WHAT HAVE YOU BEEN UP TO RECENTLY?
Well Dave, I just spent the whole day with my son and we went to the Hall of Records in New York. I'll tell you something crazy Dave. I used to be partners with Joe Weider for several years in the early 1940s and we had a falling out in 1948. In 1947 I registered the name International Federation of Bodybuilders (IFBB) and I held the first IFBB contest on January 15, 1948.

The IFBB became very famous, but I was the first one to come up with the contest and use the name. So I went to City Hall to find all the records for 1947 - very interesting.

AND WHAT DO YOU HOPE TO ACHIEVE IF YOU CAN PROVE YOU CAME UP WITH THE NAME?
My wife says, "what are you going to get out of it". If I discovered the airplane, and was the first one to fly the airplane, and they said, "no it was the Wright Brothers who did it", how would I feel? I am just hoping to get the recognition I deserve. I was forgotten in this field for so many years and would like some acknowledgement.

YOUR RESUME IS QUITE AN IMPRESSIVE ONE AND YOU HAVE BEEN INVOLVED IN BODYBUILDING FOR SOME TIME. HOW OLD ARE YOU AND WHAT KIND OF SHAPE ARE YOU IN NOW DAN?
I am 82 years young! On April 1, 2006, I will be 83 years young. I am in good shape right now. I workout every morning and I don't overdo it. I use about 50 lbs and do a lot of repetitions.

AT WHAT AGE DO YOU FEEL YOU REACHED YOUR PEAK AS A BODYBUILDER?
At the 1945 Mr America show. Bob Hoffman ran this show and for four years he had everyone from York win the contest. I always wanted to win America's most muscular man. I did this three times. No one in the world has ever done this three times.

In 1945 they had me disqualified saying I was a professional. It was because I was getting too good and was in partnership with Weider. He didn't want us to get too strong and competitive. They got the AAU to make me professional and I quit competing. You know what happens today when you quit competing.

You don't train like you used to train. In my case I got married. I always worked out, but not with the intensity of one who is competing. I had nothing to prove anymore.

HOW DID YOU GET STARTED IN BODYBUILDING DAN? WHAT GAVE YOU YOUR BIG BREAK?
I trained for three years at the age of 13 and, at this time, the Daily News in New York was running the Golden Gloves boxing tournament. They put you in all the local arenas and at the end the main show would be at Madison Square Garden. Well I trained for three years and was a pretty good boxer.

I was about 5'5" and 118 lbs. When I was ready to have my first fight, they rejected me because they found I had a heart murmur. A man told me,

He told me I had good muscular development and suggested I go into bodybuilding. You know what I said to him? What's bodybuilding? His name was Terry Robinson and he was Mr. New York State. He will be 90 years old on March 9, 2006. He gave me directions to my first gym with weights.

Terry Robinson was a great man. He raised Mario Lanza's three children. He was the first one to know when Mario died in Italy. He raised Mario's children after Mario's wife died a couple of months later of a broken heart. Terry lives in California. He was my mentor and he gave me the direction I needed at that time.

So I went into bodybuilding and entered my first New York City contest. I was so bad I came out last. I thought... these guys are monsters, what am I doing here. I was only 17 at the time. But by the time I was 19, in 1942, I was first runner up at the AAU Mr. America contest. They gave me a lot of body part awards and America's most muscular man title after that.

HOW DID YOU PREPARE FOR YOUR FIRST SHOW? WHAT SORT OF MISTAKES DID YOU MAKE INITIALLY?
I didn't train right. I was too young. It takes time to make your body grow. You can't just plant the seed and say, "let the vegetables grow tomorrow." My body was growing and it just needed time and the right training. There were no supplements. I just ate whatever good food I had.

My problem was that I could never put weight on. Until I was 125, 130, and then 140 lbs; it took a couple of years. I used to train so hard I burned all the calories.

WHAT WAS YOUR WEIGHT WHEN YOU WERE AT YOUR PEAK IN THE 1940S?
168 lbs. I did a one hand bent press of 285 lbs. I never knew how good I was at the time. I thought it was no big deal.

AND YOU TRAVELED THE COUNTRY PERFORMING FEATS OF STRENGTH?
I did this when I got on television in 1950. I was a strongman on the TV show, the very famous kid's show, called The Sealtest Big Top Circus Show. And there I traveled the country doing feats of strength and exhibitions and everything else.

WHAT WAS THE BODYBUILDING CULTURE LIKE BACK IN THE 40S AND 50S?
Whoever did bodybuilding was considered to be a mental nut job. They went crazy and couldn't see why people would do this. You have to remember, I started because I had a heart murmur. The exercise cured my heart condition.

SO BODYBUILDING HELPED YOU TO IMPROVE YOUR HEALTH. WHAT ELSE DID YOU FIND ATTRACTIVE ABOUT THE SPORT BACK THEN?
I enjoyed running all the WBBG shows that I had. All the worlds best built men appeared at my shows, and I had the greatest bodybuilding shows ever. The highlight for me was to get someone that everyone considered a god to appear. They said I would never get him. He lived in Switzerland at the time. His name was Steve Reeves.

I got him to come to my show and we put on a great show. We had coming attractions on the screen and in a very famous part of his picture Hercules, Steve Reeves broke down the columns with all his muscles tensing. My son worked the projection room and as Steve Reeves broke down the columns he with his wife and myself walked out on stage and...

I'll never forget how wild the crowd went. They were uncontrollable. They all wanted to jump up on the stage. That would be one of the highlights of all the shows I ran.

WHAT OTHER HIGHLIGHTS HAVE THERE BEEN IN YOUR BODYBUILDING CAREER?
The hall of fame honoring dozen's and dozen's of bodybuilders and movie stars.

WHAT WAS IT LIKE TO WORK WITH STEVE REEVES? WHAT KIND OF GUY WAS HE?
A nice guy. We used to visit each other at each others homes. When he used to come to my house, he loved to go up to my attic and put on my Seal test Dan muscleman cape that I wore on the TV. I didn't know, but from 1950 to 1957 he used to watch the show.

At that time he was on a Broadway show called Kismet. But we never really met until the 70s when I honored him. We were very good friends and we used to go to Broadway shows together. In fact I had a big fight with him at one time. People were saying - did you have a fight with Steve Reeves. Yes. A snowball fight. We threw snowballs at one another and he loved it. Living in California, he didn't see much snow.

YOU HAVE BEEN INVOLVED IN BODYBUILDING FOR A LONG TIME. AT WHAT PERIOD WAS BODYBUILDING'S GREATEST ERA DO YOU THINK?
The golden age of bodybuilding when they didn't have steroids. Steroids have ruined bodybuilding, and not only for men. If I ever competed in the women's division today in my best shape, I wouldn't even place. They would make me look like a beginner. That is how advanced they are - like men.

You know how many dozens and dozens of our greatest athletes have died as a result of these drugs. In 1971 I came out on the cover of Muscle Training Illustrated - my magazine - and alerted the world to the dangers of steroids. I said they were killing our athletes.

Now some 35 years later it's all coming out, what with the baseball and other sports also. It's getting into the colleges and girls are taking them - they are dying by the dozen. That's why I campaigned to them to save some lives.

IN LIGHT OF WHAT YOU HAVE JUST SAID, WHAT ARE YOUR THOUGHTS ON THE CURRENT STATE OF BODYBUILDING?
I don't follow it like I used to, but when I see these people I don't believe what they look like. They make Sergio Oliva and Arnold look like beginners. They all seem to look the same. Probably using the same bottle of steroids.

I don't know if you heard about this in New Zealand, but Arnold's calves were very poor when he first began competing, and lost to Frank Zane in his first contest in America. Then all of a sudden his calves went from 17 to over 19 inches.

THIS WAS A RESULT OF HARD TRAINING THOUGH
Today he must have lost a lot of weight but his calves are the same size. If you drop a lot of bodyweight your whole body shrinks in proportion. Any doctor examining could tell you if he still has the transplants in his calves.

THIS WAS NEVER COVERED IN THE MEDIA
They didn't want to say that about him. Before you say that you need 100 percent truth. I can only say it was rumored for many many years, but I never printed it. By the way, when Arnold came to this country in 1968, my wife and I were the ones who greeted him and Franco Columbo at the airport.

TELL ME MORE ABOUT THIS
It was good except he did certain things I didn't like. He used to fondle the girls in the restaurant.

IN HINDSIGHT, IT STILL MUST HAVE BEEN GOOD TO MEET ONE OF THE SPORTS ICONS
I publicized him and helped make him famous and he ended up suing me, period. The whole thing was, he needed money in those days and Joe Weider told him that in America you can sue people and settle, and make a lot of money.

DID YOU GET TO KNOW ARNOLD VERY WELL?
We met a couple of times. We had dinner's and breakfast's together. We did TV shows together and he was at the AAU Mr. American shows. He always wanted the publicity and me being a publisher, I could help him.

AS A PUBLISHER WHAT MAGAZINES DID YOU HAVE?
Besides Muscle Training Illustrated I published Boxing Illustrated, Karate Illustrated, Wrestling illustrated, I had a couple of rock and roll magazines and I had a women's magazine.

HOW DID YOU GET INTO THE PUBLISHING BUSINESS AND WHY?
When I broke up with Weider there was no communication to reach bodybuilders for a contest. You can't get contestants to enter if they don't know about a show. You can't get an audience. So I started my magazine in 1965 and I had a partner at the time. After 15 issues he said it wasn't making money so he wanted out.

I knew a little about publishing, but after two and a half years in the industry I got to know quite a bit and I took over the magazine at issue number 16. I started to make money on the first issue I put out because I cut my overheads. He had an office in New York City with secretaries.

I didn't have any of that. I used my own office and my office was my business. All I paid was for running costs for the office, pictures and for an editor. So I had a fixed salary; I would know what each issue was going to cost me. If I didn't I would have gone broke.

BEFORE YOUR PUBLISHING CAREER YOU SAY YOU WERE IN PARTNERSHIP WITH JOE WEIDER. TELL ME MORE ABOUT THIS
I wasn't involved in his magazines, only the barbell and exercise equipment. He lived in Canada at the time and if you ship anything from Canada they charge 10 percent duty tax. When it got to America you had to pay another 10 percent duty tax. So that means whatever was selling was going to have a 20 percent duty tax as well as all the freight costs.

It was easier to find someone to ship from the United States. We became partners because he needed someone to help him distribute. Just like Grimek did for Bob Hoffman, he used me in his ads. I was shown as the skinny kid with a weak heart who became America's most muscular man using his system. That's what got me disqualified because I was in his ads and I was a professional. John Grimek was always featured in Bob Hoffman's ads but he was considered an amateur.

HOW DID THE FALLING OUT OCCUR?
When we started in business maybe we made about $ 5,000 dollars in each year. That was gross. By the time we got through maybe we made one thousand dollars or five hundred dollars each for the year, which was nothing. But when we started to go over $ 100,000 dollars he didn't want to share the profits with me.

So he just cut my name out of the ads in the magazines and put his own name in. He was established already so he didn't need me. He is a very unscrupulous guy. No loyalty at all. There are a lot of things I could tell you about him but it will have to wait until my new book is out.

WHAT CAN YOU TELL ME ABOUT JOE WEIDER?
All I can say is he was an extremely hard worker, but very ruthless in business. He would put a knife in your back. He would use people, and throw them out. There were lawsuits. He did a lot of bad things. But that was him. That was his character. I introduced him to his first wife.

HAVE YOU HAD ANY RECENT CONTACT WITH MR. WEIDER?
No, I don't see him. Years ago I heard he was in hospital having a hernia operation so I called him and we spoke for an hour or so. We spoke about the good old days when we were kids. You tend to forget about these things. We went our own ways. I was successful as far as I know, but I always felt I was a fly and he was an elephant. I just wanted to make a living.

TELL ME MORE ABOUT THE WORLD BODY BUILDING GUILD
I started it back in 1965. I never knew I was the creator of the IFBB. Incidentally, Sports Illustrated is going to follow up on this and do a story on how the IFBB name was created by me and how I ran the first IFBB show in America. The World Body Building Guild was very competitive.

Joe was always making it his business to run shows on the same day I would run mine in New York City. At one time Tom Minichiello, one of my gym members and a good friend, was involved with the IFBB and was told by Weider to bury me. He was told to run the contest the same day Dan Lurie runs his show.

Of course I had such complete sell-outs. I never disqualified anyone. I don't care who you were with. If you were a member of the IFBB and entered any AAU or my shows, you were disqualified. That's not fair. A bodybuilder is free to do whatever he wants.

WHAT DID THE WORLD BODY BUILDING GUILD ACHIEVE?
We started the hall of fame that had a lot of famous people being honored. I even honored President Regan.

I READ THAT YOU ARM WRESTLED PRESIDENT REGAN. TELL ME ABOUT THIS. WHO WON?
He beat me, twice. I wasn't going to try to beat him. I wanted to give him respect. Besides, he was the oldest man who ever ran for president and they wanted someone to show how strong and youthful he was. So I helped with this, and I have a good ten minute tape.

When we left you know what we did to each other? We hugged and kissed each other. Now that's something for two men to do. And that's what we did in the Whitehouse.

WHAT ELSE DO YOU REMEMBER ABOUT THIS OCCASION?
He said "Dan when I was a kid I used to read all of your ads in the comic books." I said, "Mr. President, what were you doing reading comic books." He said, "I still read them today." He was the president and he still read comic books. That was an amazing thing. He was a down to earth, warm guy.

You see, I went there to honor him. I didn't complain about anything, about what I wanted him to do. I just went there to honor him. We warmed to each other pretty good. And when we arm wrestled, and he beat me, he said "Come on, you dumped it, you let me beat you." I said "No Mr. President, you beat me fair and square."

I UNDERSTAND PRESIDENT REGAN WAS VERY FIT, AND WAS BODYBUILDING ENTHUSIAST FOR MANY YEARS
Yes, he used to chop wood on his ranch and horseback ride. We kept in touch after the white house thing. We were supposed to have a rematch but it never happened. It was planned just never happened.

The picture of him and me arm wrestling went all over the world. It was on the front page of the New York Times. Many countries featured that picture and ran the story about how the president was so strong he beat a famous strong man. I loved President Regan. He was a warm, decent, down to earth president.

WHAT ARE SOME OF THE STRENGTH RECORD YOU HAVE SET OVER THE YEARS?
I did 1665 pushups in 90 minutes and 1225 parallel dips in 90 minutes. I lifted 285 lbs. with one hand over the head. That one was a specialty. I did 1200 pullovers with 55 lbs. Crazy things. Things that involved endurance. People today don't do this type of training.

They train with heavier weights and they end up with injuries and have to stop for a while. I wasn't going to get hurt. I found my body responded to hundreds and hundreds of repetitions with a lighter weight - 100 lbs.

IS THIS THE WAY YOU HAVE ALWAYS TRAINED
Yes and I sweated like a pig. I wore a sweatshirt and people would say "don't drink water while you workout." But I was so thirsty I used to gobble it up. They now say "drink water when you workout, it's good for you." So who knows.

WHAT DIET METHODS HAVE YOU FOLLOWED?
I always wanted to gain weight so I ate whatever I wanted to. I would lose around three to five pounds every workout. I sweated a lot. Also, I tried not to do much resting in between sets. I rested as little as possible, and it still ended up being a three hour workout.

HOW DO YOU EAT TODAY TO STAY IN SHAPE?
I eat very lightly, a lot of salads and health foods. And I exercise every morning for about half-an-hour, that's it. I don't do too much. I have nothing to prove.

WHAT TRAINING METHODS DID YOU ESTABLISH OVER THE YEARS?
When I started manufacturing my own barbells I established the Dan Lurie Barbell Course. I gave it out with a book and pictures and posters. It was very instructive. I was the first one to sell barbells in sporting goods stores. They weren't sold by York. They were selling main order and I came out selling to stores. From a $ 5,000 dollar a year start it exploded. Many, many years later I was only doing a small amount because I was only one man.

WHAT WERE GYMS LIKE IN YOUR DAY?
The equipment was mostly very crude and there were a few mirrors. Now everything is chromed.

YOU DISCOVERED LOU FERRIGNO. TELL ME MORE ABOUT THAT
Yes, he came to me at 16 years of age. The first thing I asked him was "how far do you want to go in bodybuilding".

So I put him on the cover of my magazine and I issued a challenge to Arnold. I said in three years this skinny kid of 6.5 and 185 lbs was going to give him some competition. And he did. And I kept showing the improvements he was making over the years. I had Lou for about six or seven years.

AND LOU ENDED UP SWITCHING TO WEIDER
That's right. He had no contract with me. It was more like a friendship. Weider offered him a $50,000 contract for five years. He did that with Arnold - paid him a big amount over a number of years. Lou switched the night I had Steve Reeves at my show and his father was upset with me because the year before he lost out to Bill Grant who represented Weider.

Lou lost out because he took some sort of water pills. The night before he looked unbeatable and when he came the next day I couldn't believe the change. I don't know what the heck he was doing. He lost all his definition.

HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE REMEMBERED DAN?
I would like to be remembered as a bodybuilder who loved bodybuilding and treated everyone fair and square. I never hurt any athlete. There were two bodybuilders who sued me - Lou Ferrigno and Arnold. I never said a word about it in my magazine. Now Weider claims he discovered Ferrigno. Bullsh*t. It's a lie.

Just like he said he started the IFBB in 1946. That's a lie. We have all the old issues and his involvement is not even mentioned. We are doing the research now. He gave me a third page in the Your Physique Magazine when I ran the January 15, 1948 show. He lied and made up stories and people believed it.

Joe was a big reader of the Hitler books.

He was a 19 year old kid. Who is looking for power at that age. One of Hitler's sayings was, if you print a lie often enough people will come to know it as the truth. That's what Joe does.

WHAT IS MOST IMPORTANT TO YOU DAN?
The most important thing in my life is my wife, my five children and 15 grand children, and soon to be three great grandchildren. That's the most important thing in my life. Not money. Weider, with all the money he could ever want, has no children although there was some talk around him having a girl at some stage, but who knows.

FINALLY, WHAT ARE THE SECRETS TO A LONG AND HEALTHY LIFE?
There is no secret. It is all in God's hands. When I was a kid they said I would live to about five or six years old. People who are healthy die of heart attacks in their 30s 40s and 50s. People in their 70s and 80s... all their lives live until their late 90s. It's all in God's hands. We don't know.

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Was America's most muscular man decided once and for all? Find out in this exclusive interview with the man behind the challenge, Dan Lurie.

When three-time America's most muscular man Dan Lurie, challenged two-time AAU Mr. America John Grimek back in December 1945 to a pose-off to determine, once and for all, the most muscular man in America, no one could have predicted the fiasco that was to follow.

On the basis of his self-professed superior conditioning and muscularity, Dan issued his now infamous challenge to Grimek with the intention of having both physiques judged fairly in what he considered to be an event of potential historical significance.

Dan also felt in his heart he could win. "I admired John Grimek's massiveness. But if you look close, as a judge would, his weak points were obvious. He had no pectorals at all, they were completely flat. He had no abdominal muscles also," says Dan. "I was more like Frank Zane, all cut up with a lot of definition. When determining the most muscular physique, that is what you look for."

What promoted Dan to challenge Grimek was the widely held belief, at the time, that Grimek was indeed the most muscular man in the world. At this point Grimek had won the AAU Mr. American twice, with a physique layered with unparalleled size. Many felt that, despite the fact that Steve Reeves was making his mark on the bodybuilding world at this time, John Grimek was the greatest, most muscular, bodybuilder ever.

This was not the case according to Dan Lurie. Dan felt he alone was America's most muscular man. Indeed, he won the title three times undefeated - the only man ever to do so. Thus, a challenge was issued to Grimek and Dan readied himself for the ultimate pose-off.

How did Grimek reply to Dan's challenge? According to Dan, a 200-word barrage of insults comprised the bulk of Grimek's reply. Grimek felt Dan had no right to challenge him and brushed it off as unworthy of consideration. Dan countered with a business proposition: they could pose-off at a popular venue and split the profits.

Nothing further was said and until months later when a Strength and Health article got everyone talking. The article stated a pose-off between Dan and Grimek would take place at Turners Hall, Philadelphia, May 4, 1946. It is worth noting that Strength and Health was, at the time, a publication run by Bob Hoffman, who also promoted Grimek when the challenge in question was issued.

News of this challenge hit Dan like a thunderbolt as he had already figured it would not take place. So was Dan ready to rumble? You bet he was, and off he went to Turners Hall to take the title he believed was rightfully his.

So, did these two legends of the sport pose-off in a historical bodybuilding showdown? Was America's most muscular man decided once and for all? Find out in this exclusive interview with the man behind the challenge, Dan Lurie.

Q
WHY EXACTLY WAS YOUR, NOW INFAMOUS, 1945 CHALLENGE TO JOHN GRIMEK? WHAT WERE YOUR REASONS?
In the early 40s, after I won the America's Most Muscular Man title three years in a row, Strength and Health never used my picture and never said I was America's most muscular man. Whenever they showed a picture of John Grimek, they said he was the world's most muscular man.

Bob Hoffman promoted Grimek as much as possible and wanted him to be the greatest Mr. America that ever lived, but Grimek wasn't the greatest ever. I felt that it wasn't fair how I was being treated, so I issued a simple letter to Grimek, in which I said I believed he was probably better built than I but as far as being most muscular - that was a different category.

John was big and thick, but never had abdominal muscles and never had pectoral muscles. I thought he would just answer politely, but he answered me in a very nasty way. We went back and forth, and I said to myself, "This could be business deal." It started to attract a lot of attention.

So I spoke to John through letters, and suggested what we could do. I said we could book a hall and run the challenge, maybe in Madison Square Garden, or some other well known place, and split the receipts. We get fair judging and whoever wins, wins.


DAN LURIE CHALLENGES JOHN GRIMEK
Before I knew it - months later - there is an article in Strength and Health (Hoffman's publication) saying the challenge was going to take place in Turners Hall, Philadelphia, in 1946. It became a big deal because Weider was plugging me and Hoffman was plugging Grimek.

I had to go on my own. Weider did not want to go because he had to face Hoffman for some reason. When I got there I had to buy an admission ticket and sit in the back row of the hall on my own. After a while, Bob Hoffman was heard saying that Dan Lurie was in the audience, and was too afraid to challenge Grimek.


DAN LURIE, LEFT, AND JOHN GRIMEK
JOHN GRIMEK: BODYBUILDING LEGEND
Winner of two AAU Mr. America titles (the only man to do so), and owner one of the more massive physiques of his time, John Grimek has gone down in history as being the first bodybuilder to retire from the sport undefeated.

JOHN GRIMEK'S STATISTICS
Titles

1939 York Perfect Man
1940 Mr. America
1941 Mr. America
1946 Most Muscular Man In America
1948 Mr. Universe Short & Overall
1949 Mr. USA
Height: 5'8"
Weight: 210 lbs (in 1949).
Born: June 17, 1910
Birthplace: Perth Amboy, New Jersey, USA
Retired from the York Barbell Company in 1985.
Passed away on November 20, 1998, at the age of 88.
Read Dan's challenge to John Grimek in its entirety: The Challenge.

HAD THE CONTEST NOT ALREADY BEEN ARRANGED? WHY WERE YOU IN THE AUDIENCE, AND WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?
I was not told to go on stage. They were talking about me while I was in the audience, trying to get me enraged. I didn't say anything, I just sat there. Then they said John Grimek is an amateur and Dan Lurie is a professional and therefore they cannot compete against one another.

HADN'T THEY FIGURED THIS OUT BEFORE THE CHALLENGE GOT TO THIS POINT?
They had already picked a place, and over 3000 people attended - there was a lot of interest shown. The challenge was changed when Hoffman said instead of it being a two-man challenge; let's make it into a contest where anyone in the world could compete.

So they firstly had the amateur part. During this part Bob Hoffman kept referring to me while I was in the audience, baiting me, and telling me to come up. The audience was chanting, "We want Lurie, we want Lurie". I then get up, and rather than go backstage - I knew the thing was all a set-up but I was too young at age 23 to understand exactly what was happening - I went right onto the stage.

Bob Hoffman said, "Get the hell off here." I thought about what to do next. I went right to the microphone and said, "Can I please speak?" He didn't want me to say anything, and when I asked to speak, a lot of the people said let him speak.

So he had no choice but to give me the microphone. And I said, "As you all know, I was here to challenge John Grimek and now they say I am professional." I said I would be glad to compete. They put Sig Klein next to me, who was age 45.

They had another guy who became a good friend of mine, Walter Podolak. He was a wrestler who went by the name of "The Golden Superman". He was no bodybuilder. He worked with weights, but had no definition. I said that it could not be a fair contest between Klein and myself, because Bob Hoffman picked the judges.

Even though the judges might be fair, they were picked by Hoffman. I said there is only one way I would compete: have the audience decide. The audience said yes, yes, yes. However, this never happened. So I went backstage and put on my trunks. When Sig Klein came out to pose - he posed first - Bob Hoffman, who was the MC, said, "Look at Sig Klein, look at his abdominal, and oblique, muscles."

He was listing all of Grimek's good points as he posed. Then, when I posed, he didn't say a word. Then, Walter Podolak came out. When it came time to announce the verdict that Klein beat me, according to the Philadelphia paper, there was a riot in the back of the auditorium - people were throwing chairs, they were unhappy about how this kid was getting cheated.

Then they said that I beat Walter Podolak by two-points. I was told, later on, that Bob Hoffman hired Podolak - paid him $100 - to come to the show and sit in the audience. He would then come up on stage at a later point and pose. Podolak didn't know what was happening but in those days $100 and transportation to the show was a good deal, so he was thrilled to do it.

Walter PodolakWALTER PODOLAK
Podolak and I became very good friends after that, and he judged some of my shows. Podolak always told me he never knew exactly what Bob Hoffman had in mind. Of course Grimek won the most muscular contest that night against whoever they had competing, and I lost to Sig Klein by a lot.

Sig Klein never had legs. Nice upper body, nice abs, but no legs. Another thing: he never, ever, entered any competitions before the one where he competed against me.

A lot of people who were at this contest, who are still alive today remember it and say how much of a joke it was.

WHAT WAS THE AFTERMATH OF THE GRIMEK CHALLENGE? WAS ANOTHER CHALLENGE ISSUED?
Weider printed what happened in his publications. Bob Hoffman went on to print his story, which was completely different to what happened. In Strength and Health, everything was written to favor them. I could not change a thing. I wrote my article to say what really happened.

Only recently, after John Grimek died, I met up with his wife at an old timer's barbell club banquet. We took pictures together. This was the closest contact I got to Grimek. He never wanted to be friendly with me because when I teamed up with Joe Weider, he saw me as his enemy - the competition. A couple of times I went to the AAU shows and Grimek would be there. I would go to shake his hand, and he would refuse to shake my hand.

A complete report on what really happened: [ online ]

DESPITE EVERYTHING YOU HAVE SAID, DID YOU EVER ADMIRE JOHN GRIMEK?
John GrimekJOHN GRIMEK
I always admired him and respected him. He was older than I was and had the backing of Bob Hoffman, who controlled bodybuilding in the early 1940s and 50s, before Weider got stronger. I admired John Grimek's massiveness. But if you look close, as a judge would, his weak points were obvious.

He had no pectorals at all, they were completely flat. He had no abdominal muscles also. But everything else he had was perfect. I was told, but I have no proof, that York (controlled by Hoffman) used to give steroids to their lifting team to make them win, and that Grimek was taking steroids.

I don't know for sure because I wasn't there. You have to remember that John Grimek was not a bodybuilder; he was strictly a lifter - a very strong weightlifter. If you look at his pictures you will see the lack of balance. He gets lost in his massive frame.

AS FAR AS YOU COULD TELL, WHAT WAS JOHN GRIMEK LIKE AS A PERSON?
I never knew him, other then the few times I went to shake his hand at dinners or AAU events. He refused to shake my hand. He always held a grudge. I never held a grudge against him. Why would I?

SO THERE WERE NO OTHER CHALLENGES?
The only other person I challenged was Joe Weider because he always bragged about how much of a champion bodybuilder and trainer of champions he was. I asked him to really show the people what he looked like.

I put the challenge of the cover of one of my magazines, but he just ignored it. We got all the pictures where he got his head and put it on the body of the Mr Universe winner. He did this so he could look back and say that that was how he looked in competition shape. It was a lie.

OBVIOUSLY JOHN GRIMEK IS A DIFFERENT STORY, YOU GENUINELY FELT YOU COULD OUTMUSCLE GRIMEK?
I was only interested in comparing muscularity. There is a difference between a body like Frank Leight's who was big and bulky and Frank Zane who was perfect. I was more like Frank Zane, all cut up with a lot of definition. When determining the most muscular physique, that is what you look for.

There is no question in my mind that the decision would have been very fair had I of beaten out John Grimek in a most muscular contest. I am not taking anything else away from John. I would have beaten him in muscularity, not necessarily anything else. That's what they went for in those days - more definition and cuts. Compared to the guys of today - who are loaded with steroids - I would look like a woman.

DAN LURIE
HAVE THERE BEEN ANY LONG-TERM CONSEQUENCES FOR YOU, STEMMING FROM THE CHALLENGE YOU ISSUED TO JOHN GRIMEK?
You have to remember this all happened in 1946. From 42 to 48 I was partners with Joe Weider, so it got some attention then, but after I broke off with Joe in 1948, I had nothing happening until 1965.

The new people hadn't even heard of me because Weider would not print my pictures, and Hoffman would never print my pictures. And Perry Reeder who printed a fair publication in Iron Man, for some reason, never printed any of my pictures. I always treated my magazine like a newspaper. A newspaper has to print everything that goes on, not just one side.

WE TOUCHED ON THIS EARLIER, BUT IF A CHALLENGE HAD TAKEN PLACE WHAT WOULD THE OUTCOME HAVE BEEN IN YOUR VIEW?
Well, it's not for me to say. If they had non-biased judges, not picked by Bob Hoffman, who knows. Even though Bob Hoffman held me back from winning the Mr. America for three years he also would have done anything in his power to make sure I didn't win the most muscular against Grimek.

In saying all this, the record stands that no one in the history of AAU bodybuilding competition has ever won the most muscular title three-years-in-a-row undefeated, except for me.

EPILOGUE
The Bob Hoffman-run show at which Dan Lurie was to challenge John Grimek, attracted 3000 people and grossed $30,000, a substantial amount of money in the mid-40s. Hoffman kept all the profits. It seems he outsmarted the kid from Brooklyn, New York.

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[Humble Narcissist]

I started bodybuilding after reading Hoffman's York book and courses.  I never knew he had the world's most perfectly developed penis.   He left that out of his books.

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Doping and sports - 1963
1963
The Italians installed their doping commission.

1963
The Council of Europe described doping as follows:

"The administration to, or the use by, a competing athlete of any substance foreign to the body or any physiological substance taken in abnormal quantity or by an abnormal route of entry into the body, with the sole intention of increasing in an artificial and unfair manner his performance in competition."

American Football


Shortly after the weightlifters and the throwers, the players of American Football also started with anabolic steroids. In 1963, the 'San Diego Chargers' offered Alvin Roy (1920-1979) the very first strength coach contract in paid football. As a former assistant coach of the American Olympic weightlifting team, he was well acquainted with anabolic steroids and so he also introduced Dianabol in American football. Some of the players claimed not to know that the small pink pills next to their plate were anabolic steroids and added they were fined if they refused to swallow the pills.

Bodybuilding
 

The American magazine ‘Muscle Builder’ published in May 1963 that the most famous bodybuilders did not owe their appearance only to hard training and healthy diet. Rumors had it that Joe Abbenda (1939-) and Bill Pearl (1930-) used Dianabol, while Tom Sansone (1935-1974) probably also used Dianabol but still preferred Nilevar. It was the very first time that a bodybuilding specialist wrote about anabolic steroids, although the editors did not know exactly what the substances were. Or just pretended they did not know.

Football
In February 1963, seven Neapolitan players were suspended for doping. In July four players from 'FC Genoa' followed. They got a ban on play and the club had to cough up a nine million Lire fine.



The English football club 'Everton FC' played champion in the season 1962-1963. According to a national newspaper it happened with the help of Benzedrine. The magazine quoted keeper Albert Dunlop (1932-1990):

"I can not remember when we were offered them for the first time, but they were handed out in the locker room. We were not obliged to take them, but most players did. Usually white tablets, only once or two also yellow. Once we started we could get as much as we wanted. They were available on competition days and quite quickly some players could not live without them."

The club admitted they had dispensed pills, but that they probably had no harmful effects. Dunlop, however, knew that he became addicted to them.

Cycling
In 1963, many cyclists had to leave the Tour of Austria, among them the entire Austrian team. At a screening just before the stage to the Grossglockner, amphetamines and other stimulants were found in the jerseys of many top racers. Apparently the gentlemen had not learned their lesson, because in 1964 and in 1965 this scenario repeated itself.

 

The Italian time trial 'Grand Prix de Forli' was contested from 1958 to 1979. In the first editions, the battle for victory was always fought by Frenchman Jacques Anquetil (1934-1987) and Italian Ercole Baldini (1933-). Anquetil won the contest three times, Baldini was the best four times. On the eve of one of those editions they dined together and because they were the strongest, they agreed to do it this time without amphetamines, only on sparkling water. Both kept their word, but on the following day they drove an average of 1.5 kilometers slower than the years before, which on they decided that this has been the last time.



The German cyclist Dieter Kemper (1937-), who was mainly active on the track, reported years later what happened in the pack during the 1960s:

"In the 1960s, the first cyclists showed up with a bandage around the arm. Beneath it syringes that they used at will during the race. Anti-depressants were used in addition to products that provided extra breath. Belgium was the epicenter of doping in that time, our caretakers and masseurs went there to buy their products. There were teams where the cyclists dropped their pants to get an injection before the start. I even saw a cyclist who injected himself through his shorts. Later appeared the anabolics and the products that change the muscles and the body. That took your health.  One of the first to swallow was Günther Haritz (1948-). Once he just left right in the middle of a race."

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The Demise Of Tom Sansone
THE TRAGIC NEWS shocked us!

Tom Sansone, Mr. America of 1958 died . . . and still only in his thirties. It just couldn't be we thought; Tom, we heard, was always in fairly good shape, rugged and strong.

It was late July when we first heard that Tom was in hard training and making the kind of gains that every weight trainee strives to achieve. But something wasn't right. Tom used to complain about internal pain and it bothered him considerably for months, all the while growing more intense. He then got a medical checkup which proved that one kidney was badly infected and there were other complications. But the doctors couldn't even guess the seriousness of his condition because even at this stage Tom was indeed a massive, muscular specimen and terminal cancer was the farthest thing from their minds. An exploratory operation was suggested to determine the seriousness of the condition and to mend the kidney if possible.

What they found was not very encouraging. One kidney was removed, part of his lungs had to be cut away and there some complications about Tom's heart.

Yet for a time, Tom seemed to rally. He came out of the operation in fine shape and those who visited him after his surgery said he looked great and looked like he would make it. He had none of the "dragged out, drawn feeling" that most people who undergo surgery show, especially those who undergo major surgery. Everyone who saw Tom felt that after another few days rest, he would be on the road to complete recovery. Even the doctors were optimistic although they did inform Tom that he had cancer, then adding that they felt sure they removed all the infected areas and that his chances for complete recovery were excellent.

A short time later we received a call from a concerned friend who said that Tom's case was terminal and that it was only a matter of weeks. This was hard news to accept and we felt sure that it was only a rumor, an error, so we promptly forgot it. Instead we expected to hear news of how Tom was back in training again and making good progress in his training. So it was with some shock that the tragic news of Tom's death on October 16th hit us. We were really disturbed and the news was most difficult to accept but facts are facts and there was no way we could alter them.

The sad details of Tom's death could not be pieced together immediately, and even now the facts are not clear except that Tom was just another cancer victim in spite of his massiveness and muscularity.

As many readers may recall, Tom began training as a teenager and during the early 50s he made an impact in physique contests around New York City. By mid-summer of 1956 he developed sufficiently enough to win the Mr. New York City title, which was always of great importance. Two years later he entered and won the Mr. America contest, which proved to be another great achievement for him. Then London was the scene for two more great victories. In 1963 he won the amateur Mr. Universe crown there and sometime later he went back to garner the professional title.

That, to our knowledge, was the last time that Tom participated in a physique contest, although we had heard that he always stayed in great shape, since working in a health studio afforded him a better opportunity than any other vocation. However, we had heard rumors that Tom smoked a lot and was addicted to using tissue building drugs - steroids. When he was hospitalized we heard more of such rumors. If Tom was a steroid user, and there was evidence to prove that he did take anabolics, there can be no doubt that this contributed to his untimely death at 38 years of age. The sad facts remain that while steroids can and do stimulate tissue growth, these steroids are unable to differentiate between benign and malignant cells and the reaction is the same on both...stimulating and encouraging growth! [THIS IS FALSE]

It's very possible that Tom's internal system harbored cancer cells that laid dormant and just waiting for a catalyst of some sort to send them off on a tangent, and such a catalyst is the anabolic drug - steroids.

It's really sad and kind of frightening to think what some bodybuilders will do just to gain a couple extra pounds or put on an extra quarter-inch of muscle here and there. Dedication is fine, but to try and build your body at the risk of losing your life is downright idiotic!

It's really unfortunate that anyone should be so rock-headed as to assume that he can beat the odds, although he may . . . for a time. Eventually, however, it will get to him and then what would be the purpose of all that training, sweating and sacrificing when, in the end, he winds up dead and all he leaves behind are some unpaid bills!

Tom's is not an isolated case. It's happened before and continues to happen but little is heard about them. One of our men (some years ago) started taking these drugs without supervision and for no apparent reason except, "I feel better when taking them" he said. This "better" feeling didn't last too long, however, because the cancer cells which were lying dormant in his lower duodenum started to grow, stimulated by the anabolics he took and hastened his demise!

Actually in his case his muscles or strength never responded very much to the drug, and when he finally underwent surgery, he never recovered, leaving this mortal coil with nothing but a big hospital and doctor bill. Moreover, had he survived long enough to see himself, and to see exactly how much size he lost aver undergoing surgery, I am sure that this would have made him turn over and die for he could never stand to lose even one-eighth of an inch anywhere. In his case he lost everything, everywhere and all his previous efforts for years went for naught! Whatta utter waste of time and effort!

Don't let it happen to you. Leave all drugs alone and train sensibly. It may take a little longer but you won't be running any great risks

[Titus Pullo]

I started bodybuilding after reading Hoffman's York book and courses.  I never knew he had the world's most perfectly developed penis.   He left that out of his books.

LOL!  I bet!

The stories about his driving are also funny as hell.  Bill Starr was a good writer.

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http://www.getbig.com/boards/index.php?topic=485188.0

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Baddest Motherfuckers Ever- Chet “The Oak Slayer” Yorton
As I’ve pointed out, Arnold Schwarzenegger was mostly a paper tiger as a Mr. Olympia, but even as such, defeating him has to say something about one’s pedigree as everyone on Earth seems to have lined up to suck Arnold’s dick back in the day.  That’s not to say that there were no good builders back in the day, but rather that they either competed in other federations than the Oak or the judges and federations gave the Oak preferential treatment.  In any event, one of the few people to defeat Arnold in bodybuilding (and who would have smoked the Oak in powerlifting as well) is a dude about whom you’ve likely heard little or nothing- Chet Yorton.


Chet Yorton’s life reads like it was written by Joe Simon and illustrated by Jack Kirby, with an origin story so campy and stereotypical that it only could have come from a 1940s pulp rag.  Though Chet’s personal habits fell in line with a whiskey-fueled backstory bearing the tagline “America’s Greatest Hero,” reality was for once as ridiculous as life.  After a car wreck that would have killed Bruce Willis in Unbreakable, an almost-eighteen year old Chet Yorton was left a shattered man, and frankly I cannot describe the situation better than the great Earle Liederman:

“After he had somewhat recuperated from a total physical wreck of broken and also shattered bones, serious multiple lacerations, concussion, and also escaping by only one-eighth of an inch from death, he developed himself so rapidly despite such handicaps, that within two years of exercising he won the title of Mr. Wisconsin, and also in the same affair won an extra award for being the most muscular. Such seems to be somewhat of a record–to become a prize winner within two years after a start from physical profundity” (Liederman).

As I said, Yorton should have received a lifetime supply of spandex and latex clothing and in a better world would have spent his life battling dudes with concrete for skin who shot lasers out of their eyes while robbing banks and attempting global domination.  Saying Chet Yorton is genetically gifted is like saying the Elon Musk is a marginally intelligent guy occasionally has a good idea, but like Musk, Yorton worked his fucking ass off to develop the build he had.  Training six days a week from age 18 to age 26, Yorton built a physique so dense, and with so much muscle separation and vascularity, that it looked like the product of many more years under the bar.  The crazy thing was, however, that he wasn’t even all that athletic growing up.  Instead, it took a car crash so ridiculous it seems like one of the more unlikely death scenes in the Final Destination series to spur him on to training, and had his friend not been a shitty driver in an era wherein you wouldn’t go to jail for forgetting to wear your fucking seatbelt, we never would have even heard of the man.

“One night as a friend was driving me home and while hitting a speed of about 40 miles per hour, he missed a curve in the road and the car struck a tree which was but two blocks from my abode. I braced myself against the floorboards but the impact drove my hips out of their sockets. I flew up hitting the dashboard, shattering my thighs. I was thrown against the windshield, smashing it, and cutting my left eye, right through the eyeball. I also ripped open my left forearm from the elbow to the wrist. But that spear of glass that penetrated my eyeball was the most serious of all. And afterwards when I became conscious in the hospital in Milwaukee, I was told that had this glass penetrated my eyeball just one-eighth of an inch further I would have been dead as it then would have pierced my brain. But the nearest I came to that morbid state was a brain concussion.

“I lay in the car for half an hour until the police arrived and pried the doors open with crowbars to release me. The ambulance rushed me to the St. Francis hospital where the doctors then debated about amputating my right leg, but not consenting, they then performed surgery on it for four and one-half hours, putting in a five-inch steel plate and eight screws around my right thigh bone. Three days later they performed surgery on my left thigh bone and at which time they inserted a stainless steel rod about an inch in diameter, inside the femur bone of my left leg from the hip to knee by cutting my hip open and drilling out the hollow where the rod was to be inserted down the center of the thigh bone.


“I was put in casts from hips to toes in traction where I lay in this position for a month. The cast was then taken off my left leg when physical therapy started for its benefit. When I was able to bend my left leg sufficiently the surgeons allowed me to walk on crutches supporting my bodyweight on my right leg that was still in cast.

“I hobbled around on crutches and finally was allowed to go home. There I continued hobbling around on crutches for some time, and one day, I accidentally lost my balance and fell down the porch steps. This fall bent my left leg and also left thigh bone into a 45 degree angle! So back to the hospital I was taken for 17 more days under further surgery and then confined to a wheel chair for over four months. I also had to undergo further treatments for still another month and so I had to later learn to walk on crutches all over again” (Liederman).


Yorton looked big as fuck when he bulked.
Chet Yorton Vital Statistics

Height: 5’11”
Off Season Weight: 210-240lbs
Competition Weight: 215-220lbs
Arms: 19″
Neck: 18″
Chest: 51½”
Waist: 32½”
Thighs: 26½”
Calves: 18″
Squat: 600lbs (competition, post automotive armageddon)
Deadlift: 600lbs (competition)
Bench: 450lbs (competition)
Olympic Total: 800lbs (Clean and jerk, clean and press, and snatch)
Semi-strict Curl (hips had to remain against a pole): 230lbs
Strict Curl (with back and hips against pole: 205lbs
So, after discovering dumbbells while sitting in a hospital wheelchair, this literal superman managed to put on 55 lbs of rip in seven months.  He kept bulking from there, ending up at a massive but puffy 240lbs, for a total weight gain of about 80lbs in about a year and a half.  From there, he cut until 210, entered his first bodybuilding contest, and crushed everyone, in a story so preposterous that by now every Redditor is subconsciously screeching the word “steroids” in spite of the fact that Redditors think my writing will make you pop positive for gear and avoid it like they do hard training.  Even had the man used steroids, this story would be less believable than the one about Michael Jackson being a straight man who didn’t fuck kids.  Nevertheless, it is not only true, but the man was so vociferously opposed to steroids that he became the first obnoxious natty bro in bodybuilding.


Oh yes, people, it seems natty bros have always been a pain in the ass.  Although steroid use didn’t carry the stigma then that it does now, Yorton railed against it like Seventh Day Adventists do against meat, fun, and fucking.  Frankly, it should have been a a siren call to everyone that a literal superman who packed on 80lbs of rip right out of a fucking wheelchair in under two years of training thought the use of steroids was unfair, but instead of people taking notice of the fact superman decried them, Yorton just managed to piss everyone off to the point that he was shunned.  Beyond that, he pissed off the AAU by appearing in two hilariously bad beach movies and saw his placings take a beating like a black woman who got lippy with an NFL player in a hotel lobby.  And the final ingredient in the shit sandwich that was Yorton’s early shit sandwich of a career?  The fact that bodybuilding was about as lucrative then as powerlifting is today.  As such, Yorton said, “when life gives you lemons, say ‘fuck the lemons’ and bail,” and proceeded to use his own money to finance the first natty bro federation the NBA (Natural Bodybuilding Association), and and magazine, Natural Bodybuilding.


As with anything else natty bros touch, the entire operation went to shit in short order.  No one believed the competitors were natty, in spite of Yorton’s wild-eyed enthusiasm for treating steroids users like heretics during the Inquisition, and the fact that the contests involved serious prize money for the time and the most stringent testing available at the time.  As such, the whiny pussies of the natty world drove Yorton nearly insane with their incessant bitching and concomitant refusal to pay for anything themselves, and so Yorton sold his supplement shop, terminated the operations of the federation, and went into the antiquing business with his wife in 1982.


Arnold later said that he looked like a pile of uncooked bread dough standing next to Chet Yorton onstage, and changed both his training style and his contest preparation completely so as never to be embarrassed onstage again.
“In the middle 1960s, a number of things irked him personally and spiritually.  He saw a destructive trend rise in Southern California as steroids took a grasp on the field.  He also noted large areas of what he considered immoral conduct on the part of many top bodybuilders who seemingly sold themselves to the highest bidder for sexual favors to earn a non-laborious livelihood, so that their training would not suffer.  In that framework, he also noted  number of political intrigues that occurred within the organization governing bodybuilding contests” (Roach 271).

In other words, he didn’t like the was shit was run, went his own way, and the world went against him… mostly because natty bros don’t even trust each other and do little else than accuse everyone of being on steroids all the time.  Nevertheless, this is a guy who managed to intuitively concoct a program that allowed him to put on 55lbs while shrinking his waist 3″ in two years, and produced one of the sickest physiques in an era that was filled with them. 


Speaking of an era filled with sick physiques, Yorton was sanctioned by the AAU (in a bout of fuckery that would make even the limpest micropenises in the IPF hard as the gumdrops they resemble) for appearing in the movie Muscle Beach Party with the superstar ensemble of Mr Olympia Larry Scott, champion gunsmith and Mr. America Gene Shuey, Steve Merjanian, Dan “Grizzly Adams” Haggerty, and bodybuilder and sword and sandal actor Peter Lupus, which resulted in lower placing than he should have received in the AAU Southern California and Mr California and made Yorton more bitter than an incel at a Valentines Day singles party. 


Chet Yorton, occasional training partner of Chuck Ahrens, describing the vast difference between the modern attention whore and the dudes of his era who actually enjoyed lifting:

“Chuck [Ahrens] never cared about competing.  He just liked lifting for himself.  It wasn’t uncommon.  I have encountered a number of athletes over the years who could have competed in powerlifting or bodybuilding and when approached to do so, they just say ‘naa’ and shrug it off” (Roach 274).

Yorton had the good luck to train alongside some of the biggest names of the late 50s and early 60s, but all of the lifters at that time had entirely different takes on training.  As such, Olympic weightlifters shared training methods and trained with proto-powerlifters and bodybuilders, and their training methods would adapt and evolve over time to reflect the environment in which they were developed and the best practices the lifters had learned in those places.  Yorton was no different.  Although he was well known for doing a bizarre workout consisting of sets of 22 reps, he utilized everything from six days of training a week to one session every five days.  The following is his contest prep program, which he did in a two days on, one day off schedule.  Day one was push, day two was pull and squat, and day three was off, and he’d repeat that ad nauseam until the day of the contest.


Contest Prep Program (2 Days On, 1 Day Off)

Day 1: Chest, Shoulders and Triceps

Bench Press– As many sets as necessary until you reach 100 reps total, then 1 rep max.  Chet usually did 5 sets of 22 with 315 and then a max single.  On these and every other set, Chet went to failure.
Lateral Raise–  5 x 8-10
Bent-over Lateral Raise– 5 x 8-10
Barbell Overhead Press– 5 x 8-10
Barbell Front Raise– 5 x 8-10
Triceps Pushdowns– 5 x 8-10
Reverse Grip Dips– 5 x 8-10
One-Arm French Press– 5 x 8-10
Triceps Kickbacks– 5 x 8-10
Incline Crunches– 500 reps
Leg Raises– 500 reps

I’ve had the good fortune to have been around some top bodybuilders in my time, but I’ve rarely seen one as perfectly proportioned and “finished” as he was. And, this was well past his competition years. Not to be cliche, but he looked like a statue. Most photos of him I’ve seen don’t do him justice. He was far from huge (I would guess he weighed 190-200 or so), but *everything* was in perfect proportion, separated, and cut. I swear, no need to add or subtract an ounce anywhere. The finish to his physique had that very rare quality reminiscent of a thoroughbred horse or large cat. I don’t want to overstate this too much, but unlike a lot of bodybuilders before or since, a build like that looks like it was made by the hand of God rather than Man – everything went together that well. Arnold, Dave, Pearl, Zane and very few others I can think of fall into that category. He posed to “Exodus” or one of those really inspiring pieces. It was outstanding. I won’t forget it. The crowd went wild (Luttrell).

Tuesdays- Back, Biceps and Legs

Behind the Neck Pulldowns– 5 x 8-10
Wide-Grip Rows– 5 x 8-10
Reverse-Grip Rows– 5 x 8-10
One-Arm Dumbbell Rows– 5 x 8-10
Barbell Curls– 5 x 8-10
Concentration Curls– 5 x 8-10
Seated Alternating Dumbbell Curls– 5 x 8-10
Standing Dumbbell Curls– 5 x 8-10
Squats– 5 x 8-10
Hack Squats– 5 x 8-10
Leg Curls– 5 x 8-10
Leg Extensions– 5 x 8-10
Standing Calf Raises (Toes pointed straight)– 5 x 40
Standing Calf Raises (Toes pointed out)– 5 x 40
Standing Calf Raises (Toes pointed in)– 5 x 40
Incline Crunches– 500 reps
Leg Raises– 500 reps

“I will never forget the tense, prolonged time it took during the prejudging posedown before the decision was announced. As I sat studying each contestant while they moved from pose to pose, two or three British judges were behind me making their decision. I heard them all agree that it was Chet Yorton’s calves that gave him the edge over Arnold; so Yorton won by a pair of larger, better developed calves” (Grimek).
Off Season Program (Done around every five days)

Squat– 2 x 22
Overhead Press– 2 x 22
Deadlift– 2 x 22
Bench Press– 2 x 22 (1x22x225; 1x22x325)
If the above program blows your fucking mind, it should- even famed strength coach Bill Starr was in disbelief about it.

“The most unusual program I ever saw for a bodybuilder belonged to Chet Yorton when we trained together at the old Muscle Beach Gym in Santa Monica. He did four exercises for two sets of 22 reps. How he came up with that grouping of numbers I’ll never know, but it worked perfectly for him. Not only did he have one of the most impressive physiques I have ever encountered, but he was extremely strong as well, maybe the strongest of the lot. For example, he would use 225 for his first set of benches, then jump 100 pounds and do 22 reps with 325. I know that because I handed off and spotted him. I seriously doubt whether another bodybuilder—or strength athlete for that matter—in the world could duplicate such a feat. And he weighed just over 200 pounds.

It was a routine he specifically designed to fit his needs.

The majority of the population in this country is very much like the characters in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World. Not quite that extreme, of course, although similar in many respects. Everything should be done in a precise, orderly fashion, and when that happens, they’re happy without having to think about it. Take some Soma if things get hectic. If there are problems, others will provide the answers. As a result, we as a nation have become dependent on others’ expertise and take few steps to become independent” (Starr).


And speaking of independence, let’s mention the diet the oh-so-learned natty bros of the internet claim cannot possibly be used to good effect by anyone who doesn’t “eat clen and tren hard”- a borderline ketogenic diet.  When training hard, Yorton ate six times a day and drank a boatload of beer, though he’d cut it to three and less beer if he was trying to lean out.  According to Earle Liederman, Yorton ate no salt or other seasonings when dieting hard, nothing that might be constituted of delicious, delicious carbohydrates.  Instead, Yorton preemptively took a massive shit on the dietary stylings of the alleged genius science bros like Mike Israetel and stayed yacked as fuck and lean on:

Breakfast

6-8 eggs
2 glasses of raw milk with protein powder and brewer’s yeast
Lunch

1lb rare ground beef
Vegetables and a gelatin salad
2 glasses of raw milk with protein powder and brewer’s yeast
Dinner

1lb of liver, chicken or steak, or occasionally fish
Lots of vegetables and a salad, and as usual soybean powder
2 glasses of raw milk with protein powder and brewer’s yeast
Essentially, Yorton’s physique belied the fact that the polar opposite of the way a modern natty bro would recommend.  He ate too much protein and too few carbs, trained way too fucking much, drank too much, and likely fucked and cursed and was generally far more awesome than those humorless, useless fuckwits would ever consider being.  According to one first hand account, Yorton blew minds with his eating, training, and physique wherever he went.

“I spent some time with Chet immediately after his Mr. Universe win in London, the day after I drove him North for 4 hours to promote his posing appearance in a show in Manchester. We had some fun on the way when we stopped to ea , a large group of people gathered round the car peering in. Chet was carrying his Mr. Universe trophy and expressed surprise that so many of the public (for that time) knew about bodybulding, what he didn’t realize was that he was sat in the first Ford Mustang to be imported into Britain and was quite an eye-stopper!

Once we were inside, the chef came running into the cafe to see who had ordered an 8 egg omelette! At 9pm that evening Chet was concerned that he hadn’t had a workout for about 5 days with travelling and wanted to look well for his posing display the next day so I took him to my gym and he worked out for over 3 hours. By this time it had turned midnight and all the while he was worried that my wife might have gone to bed without leaving us some food. Not to worry she left all kinds of cold meats: ham, beef, chicken, eggs, tuna, salad, whole wheat bread – a whole tableful of food. I had a fairly normal plateful and Chet scarfed the rest and believe me I’ve never seen anyone eat as much food- he didn’t leave a crumb!

That was at about 1am and off we went to bed. Next morning my wife asked what he would like for breakfast and Chet said he would like a tuna fish omelette if we had any more left. She confirmed that we had a tin in the fridge but then Chet sheepishly admitted that he had been up earlier and feeling like a snack had eaten it” (Sweeney).

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The first seventy years were easy, but the next seventy are going to be a bitch.”

The takeaways from this man’s life and training career are simple.  One, throw your fucking program out the window and figure out how best to train for you.  Spit on the overpaid coach you thought you needed because you didn’t know better, laugh at the dipshits on the internet who regard programming as some magical compilation of formulae that will unlock the secrets to strength, and forge your own fucking path.  And two, stay the fuck away from natty bros.  The only thing that could beat Chet Yorton was the relentless negativity of the natty bros and their endless witch hunts to root out all traces of awesome in their midst.  You want to be natty?  That’s all well and good.  Shut the fuck up about it, don’t waste your time debating the nattiness of others, and train your fucking ass off.  The time you spend doing that shit is far better spent training, eating, or getting a goddamn nut off, because I think we can all agree that the internet’s natty community is one of the most intolerable, unfuckable bunch of dickheads this side of ISIS.

[Humble Narcissist]

That last statement was made by Jamie Lewis who hates natties with a passion probably because he is juiced to the gills and wishes he had the balls to train that way.

[funk51]

That last statement was made by Jamie Lewis who hates natties with a passion probably because he is juiced to the gills and wishes he had the balls to train that way.

   you got it.

[funk51]

Chuck Vinci- “You People Lift Like Pussies and Look Like Shit.”
On the heels of my porn- and vitriol-packed “NoFap” article, I thought perhaps a nice counterpoint to one of the most insidious and wrongheaded theory regarding male-female interpersonal relationships- the belief that chicks won’t fuck guys shorter than them. I’m living proof that short dudes get laid, and while I’m no Wilt Chamberlain I’ve been very consensually inside enough broads that I can say if you’re jacked and a pithy asshole, height really isn’t an impediment in pulling chicks. And I likely haven’t even touched the over numbers of the jacked, pocket-sized dude over whom I would tower like Godzilla even when he was in his prime, Chuck Vinci (b. 1933 –d. 2018) .

If you imagined the little Hobbit from the walking tree movies as a jacked Olympic weightlifter who resembled nothing so much as a Honey I Shrunk the Kids version of Sylvester Stallone in 1982, you’d picture Vinci correctly. Or a taller Verne Troyer, wearing a pelt made of muscle from victims of his vicious, drunken ankle-biting adventures after the bar on Saturday night. Though Flex Lewis has seven inches and seventy pounds on Vinci at his biggest, though you wouldn’t be able to tell if the two front squatted with one another- Lewis can only get a triple to Vinci’s double with 400lbs.


Vinci atop the podium. Looking at that picture, you have no fucking clue how tall the dudes is- scaled up to Hugh Jackman’s height, you’re looking at a dude who would look and move like Batista, not a musical theater actor who found the glory of the weight room.
Chuck Vinci Vital Statistics

Height: 4’10”
Weight: 123lbs
Number of World Records: 12
Front Squat: 400lbs x 2
Deadlift: 600lbs at 123
Bench: 325lbs at 132
Strict Curl: 155lbs at 132
Press: 295lbs at 148; 243 at 123
Though his performance on the platform was nothing short of breathtaking, it is actually his gym lifts and casual competition numbers that really had people talking. For instance, at a York Barbell picnic in 1961, Vinci pressed 250, snatched 235, and jerked 300 pounds for a total 25 pounds over the world bantamweight record and a press 7 pounds over his own record in that lift… in the pouring fucking rain, while standing on slippery plywood. And beyond that, Chuck Vinci was a fucking unit when he took his shirt off, which is frankly the point of lifting in the first place.


And before you ask, Vinci did compete in bodybuilding a couple of times, but his tiny stature just killed him competing with open weight classes. He took a DNP at the 1955 FICH Mr. Universe competition (which was won by his Olympian teammate Tommy Kono), then took second in his class at the AAU Masters Mr USA in 1980. Not exactly a breathtaking bodybuilding record, but Vinci was competing in a time when definition was definitely a distant second to size when judges compared competitors.


Not that any of that mattered, because Chuck owned mirrors- he knew he looked damn good- and he was one of the strongest men under 150lbs this side of Maxick. The last American male to pull in a gold medal for weightlifting in the Olympics, Chuck’s bonafides were solid as fuck whenever he entered a new gym, and the man had enough swagger to warrant him mention for being the best candidate for an <150lb Macho Man.

The man was essentially destined to be a badass, as he was basically Joe Pesci from Goodfellas, but built like the Italian Stallion. Born in the blue-collar brawler-filled inner city of Cleveland in 1933, Vinci was the son of Italian immigrants at a time in which we were at war with Italy… and the man had a learning disability to boot. By the time he was a teenager, the lilliputian Adonis everyone perceived to be dumber than a sack of hammers dropped out of eighth grade to become a fucking steelworker. At that age, I was still memorizing random shit out of the encyclopedia to live up to this weird “Human Dictionary” rep I had in middle school and was fight fighting kids over GI Joes at lunch, not dropping out of tween daycare to pursue the manliest career on the fucking planet.

Unlike the vast majority of us, I would think he already had two years of lifting under his belt by the time he was 14. Small for his age but always interested in fitness, at the age of 12 he began to try to lift his brother’s 105lb barbell. Though he couldn’t pull it past weight height, Vinci persisted in trying, and lifted it overhead easily before his fourteenth birthday (which is fucking insane- a bodyweight plus strict press at 14).


By the age of 15, Chuck Vinci was an apprentice steelworker and began training at the Central YMCA in Cleveland. That’s not to say he was a member of the guy- he didn’t have money for the fee to join, so he scaled the wall into the Y’s property and sneaked in the back door of the weight room.

“He soon became a favorite of the weight room denizens, who admired both his emerging strength and phenomenal endurance. While others might perform several exercises and go home. Vinci would train for hours, performing virtually every weight training exercise in the book.

While at the YMCA, Chuck was fortunate to meet Lt. Vince Ardito of the Cleveland police department. Vince taught Chuck how to perform the press, snatch and C&J. The young Vinci took to these lifts immediately and he was soon dreaming of a great career in weightlifting. We are not certain of the exact date of Vinci’s first competition, but he was barely 18 years of age and managed to perform lifts of approximately 150 lb. in the press and snatch and 180 lb. in the C&J, which was enough to garner him a second place.” (Hoffman).


Within two years of that meet, Vinci won the Ohio State AAU Championships with a 555 lb. total.  He went on to win the Junior Nationals later than year, then won Nationals the year after that. Vinci ended up winning seven straight Nationals in weightlifting that coincided with three Olympic golds and two silvers in the World Championships. In spite of the fact that he was one of our best Olympic weightlifters in history, it’s likely that more people know of a 123lb weightlifter who beat every non-heavyweight lifter on the team in arm wrestling in a single back-to-back matches.

“During their international trips, the US team would typically retire to a local beer hall after the a competition. The strength of the US team was well known around the world, but there were always some locals who doubted the “real strength” of weightlifters in general. Consequently, these locals often challenged the US team to an arm wrestling competition.

It was a such as moment that Chuck’s prowess as an arm wrestler could be very useful indeed.  It was at such a moment that one of the US lifters would say (in a seemingly innocent statement) ‘We are the greatest lifters in the world and have proven our strength in competition. Why should we bother with some local pretenders? But on the other hand, we are sporting men, respectful of the sincerity of our challengers. Therefore, we offer the following counterchallenge. Take our smallest and weakest man – little Chuck here – and see if you can make him work up a sweat. If you can, we will continue, but if not, please let us just enjoy our beers.’

Unaware of Vinci’s ability or endurance in arm wrestling, the locals always accepted this seemingly reasonable, if not boastful, challenge. They were confident they would summarily discharge the “little guy” and then go on to teach the Americans a lesson. Inevitably, one of their champions was brought to the table to wrestle Vinci. To his chagrin, Chuck was able to put him down. Attempts by several others met with the same results and the challengers soon had to admit that these weightlifters were incredibly strong. Little did they know that Chuck could have delivered the same result with most of the US team!” (Hoffman).


Vinci’s ability to pull off that sort of strength endurance and raw power came from two places- his years as a steelworker and his insane training volume. His training volume was similar to that of the modern Chinese weightlifting team, though without the rigid structure. He’d do full body sessions three to four days a week that lasted all day and consisted of the Olympic lifts, their component parts (like the squat), and a shitload of bodybuilding. And all day doesn’t mean a few long hours- it means eight hours or more in the gym at a time, pounding the shit out of the weights like he was a horny centaur at a pounding Bonnie Rotten’s stable of glorious tattooed sluts at an Evil Angel party.


The woman is a national treasure.
“My confirmation of Chuck’s extraordinary endurance came from one of the very few men ever to have won National Championships in both weightlifting and powerlifting – Larry Mintz. Larry, a huge enthusiast of lifting, decided to take his vacation in York, PA one summer during the late 1950’s. Chuck happened to be training in York that summer. As Larry related the story, he walked into the York Barbell Company’s gym for a training session and saw that Chuck was already under way with his workout.  Larry was no slouch when it came to training endurance.

There were occasions when he packed his lunch, and went on to spend much of the day training. But Larry was startled by what he saw from Chuck.

Mintz’s workout lasted about 3 hours that day. During that period he performed the 3 competition lifts, pulls and squats. He finished off with a shower and went to get something to eat.

When Larry left the gym, Chuck was just as he had found him, still training.

Larry found a restaurant, had a meal and then decided to take in a movie before retiring for the day.

After the movie, Larry happened to walk by the Barbell Co. on his way toward his hotel. He noticed that the lights were on and he heard the clang of weights being lifted. Mintz wondered who might be lifting this late in the day. When he entered the gym he saw Chuck still training! A total period of more than 8 hours had expired. By the time he returned to NY, Larry certainly understood why Chuck Vinci was as great and as versatile lifter as he was. Chuck’s long sessions included many bodybuilding exercises, like bench presses and curls” (Hoffman).

Nor did Vinci take advice from anyone about anything. The man did what he wanted, when he wanted, and how he wanted. When the coach of the weightlifting team, legend Bob Hoffman, told him that “if you had two pounds less pectorals, you could add two pounds somewhere else on your body which would make you an even greater lifter” (Hoffman). Chuck Vinci scoffed at Hoffman’s advice- he wasn’t about to let anyone show his ass up on the bench just to put a little extra onto his total for weightlifting. He already dominated that sport and needed to spread his wings to let everyone in the strength world he was the baddest guy on the block not named John Grimek.


“At a time when there wasn’t much money in weightlifting, [Chuck Vinci] lifted his heart out for the glory of it, I suppose. There was hardly anything else.”

– John Terpak

This even extended to his attempts. For world record attempts at the time, lifters could take as many as they wanted. At the Eastern Olympic Trials in 1956, Vinci made eight attempts on a world record clean and jerk (which meant ten attempts on that lift total) before finally nailing the jerk and locking it out for a new world record. Nor did that destroy him for future competitions, as he competed six days later and hit a new record total. The man’s gym workload was so insane he didn’t mind taking 10 max attempts in fifteen minutes, and his desire to win was so strong he managed to succeed after six failed attempts in a row.

After taking silver at the 1960 Olympics, it looked like Vinci’s run had ended. Embroiled in what was apparently an emotionally devastating and acrimonious divorce (cue the alt-right saddies bemoaning the plight of Papa John), the dude didn’t compete in 1962 or 63. By the time that shit had blown over, Vinci was again ready to attack the platform but suffered a horrible back injury in training. Though he missed the cutoff to make the Olympic team, he still managed a solid total at a trial a couple of weeks later. Though everyone was by then convinced that Vinci’s career had ended, he competed once more, and broke the 800lb total barrier for the first time while setting a new American record in the press (Dreschler).


Nor did he quit lifting after quitting compeition- Vinci was in it for the love of it, not for the fame or the sport itself. He made a halfhearted attempt to make the Olympic team in 1976, and made an easy 198 snatch at that time without regular training and at 43, so he retained a lot of strength. He continued hitting the gym for a few hours a day, three days a week, until heart surgery at the age of 79 slowed him down a bit. Declaring “I’m going to do it for the rest of my life,” after surgery, Vinci continued training in some capacity until his death last year, at age 85 (English).

A beast, by any reckoning. Although he famously protested that he didn’t party or even drink early in his career, the US Olympic weightlifting team in the 50’s was like Mötley Crüe in the 90s- they were inside more women every year than an OBGYN and partied their fucking asses off. If you’ll recall, two of Vinci’s teammates (and the other lightweight lifters on the team) were involved in the sex scandal that got Muscle Beach shut down, and Bob Hoffman blamed the end of their run of dominance over the Russians entirely on their obsession with pussy, booze, and weed. In other words, he and two other near midgets were pulling the hottest women in America for a solid decade.


The lightweight dudes look like they’re in a goddamn boy band. They pulled more ass than 4H kids in a donkey tug-of-war every time they hit the fucking bar.
Thus, any idea that a dude can’t get laid or end up with rad chicks due to his height are retarded- and science agrees.

“In conclusion, we have shown that all previously documented preference patterns for partner height are at least qualitatively realised in actual pairings. We note, however, that compared to random mating the magnitude of these effects was generally low, suggesting that mating preferences were only partially realised. These results are in line with a recent study that showed that traits considered strongly related to attractiveness, such as height, are not necessarily strongly related to actual pairing” (Stulp).


Vinci, Ike Berger (first guy to press double bodyweight in a meet), and superstar Tommy Kono.
And irrespective of any of that shit, if you’re not strict pressing 295, you probably should be, because two dudes in the above pic did so while weighing under 150 seventy years ago, and we can’t have Silent Generation motherfuckers outlifting us, now can we?


“RIIIIGHT?”
Like that shit? If so, it’d be dope if you’d support the site by becoming a Patron (hell, throw me a few bucks and berate me in the comments- I could get into that sub shit). And if you already signed up, I really appreciate it- I honestly can’t afford to do this for free anymore, and I don’t want to nerf the site so it can be used by advertisers. Thanks for helping me bring you guys the weirdest, coolest, most esoteric shit in the world of strength and conditioning!

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Irvin Johnson’s Scientific Body Building and Nutrition Course (1951)
DECEMBER 4, 2018 / CONOR HEFFERNAN
rheoblair

Better known as Rheo H. Blair, Irvin Johnson was one of the foremost bodybuilding nutritionists of the 1950s and 60s. Producing one of the most sought after protein powders in the Iron Game, Blair was lauded for his nutritional knowhow and ability to achieve seemingly unbelievable weight gain amongst his clients.

Bearing that in mind, today’s short post details a sample eating plan from Johnson’s ‘Scientific Bodybuilding and Nutrition Course’, a mail order course produced in 1951 which promised to increase reader’s weight and muscle mass if followed correctly.

Similar to the ‘Get Big Drink‘ previously covered, the diet acts as a timely reminder that calories are needed for muscle gain. And that a systemised eating plan is often the easiest method of going about this. Enjoy!


Sample Eating Plan

Breakfast:

2 or 3 eggs
2 oz. Ham or bacon, or other meat, or extra egg
1 glass Johnson’s Hi-Protein Food
2-4 Johnson’s Formula 6 capsules, 2 Johnson’s Vitamin and Mineral tablets, 6 to 25 Johnson’s Hepro tablets

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Mid-Morning Snack:

1 Teaspoon of Proto
2 oz. Cheese or 1 glass Hi-Protein

Lunch:

1 to 3 teaspoons of Proto
4 to 6 oz. Of meat, or all you want
vegetable or fruit
1 glass Hi-Protein
Butter
2 to 4 Johnson’s Formula 6, 6 to 25 Hepro

Mid-Afternoon Snack

1 teaspoon Proto
2 eggs beat up in orange juice or 1 glass Hi-Protein
2 to 4 Formula 6, 6 to 25 Hepro

Dinner

1 to 3 teaspoons of Proto
Meat, large serving
Fruit or vegetable
Whole wheat bread and butter
1 glass Hi-Protein
2 to 4 Formula 6, 6 to 25 Hepro

Mid-Evening Snack

1 to 3 teaspoons Proto
Cottage cheese, large serving, or 2 oz. Yellow cheese or 1 glass Hi-Protein
2 to 4 Formula 6



Notes by Rus McDermott:

The other Johnson supplements in us eat the time were Hepro tablets, which contained approximately 85% protein in easily digested form with all the essential amino acids; Johnson’s Multiple Vitamin and Mineral Tablets, which were a daily supplement of 24 vitamins and minerals, along with yeast and liver; Proto, a liquid amino acid; and Formula 6, the components of which I haven’t been able to find. It may have been an essential fats supplement, but that is pure conjecture on my part

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oearl's manchester gym= Bill Pearl owned a number of gyms over the years in California and I thought I’d share this story about the gym he owned above in Manchester California...

It was situated on the fringes of the watts area damaged by the 5 day riots in 1965 Bill and his brother Harold who was even bigger than Bill spent five nights on the roof with two loaded shotguns during the riots.

He decided to sell the gym not long after he had a altercation in a restaurant’s car park nearby

“three black men proceeded to park in the space I had already two thirds occupied. In an effort to avoid trouble, I backed our car out to give up the space. As we walked towards the restaurant one of them waited belligerently. I stopped and said “hey man you forgot to do something!” He sneered and said, what did I forgot to do you @&#*? I said, you forgot to thank me for the parking space. He took a swing I knocked him to the pavement his friends came running to help as all hell broke loose.”

One of the men ran off to to grab his gun screaming he’s going to blow his mother F## head off, Bills wife Judy and her children crying insisted they left turned around to find three more men stood on the side walk with tire irons they started to throw them one hit Bill in the groin and clipped the side of his head he managed to back his car out with a horde of men throwing objects including machetes. Bill managed to drive back to his gym where he told his brother they grabbed the shotguns and cruised the neighbourhood for hours searching for them thankfully in his own words he didn’t find the original three “life was too short” and the gym in Manchester was history...

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HOW VINCE GIRONDA HELPED SHAPE ARNOLD TO WIN THE MR OLYMPIA
July 01, 2020  5 min read
 

Written by Dr. Juan Carlos Cassano a.k.a. The Golden Era Bookworm



ARNOLD ARRIVES AT VINCE’S GYM
When we think of Arnold Schwarzenegger, imagery such as The Terminator, The Governator, champion and legendary bodybuilder and winner of 7 Mr. Olympia’s comes to mind. When we imagen Arnold training for those Olympia’s, imagery of Gold’s Gym and footage of the film Pumping Iron runs in our minds, his grueling workouts, posing out with Franco and Lou for the title, and Joe Weider handing him the title. Although bodybuilding mogul Joe Wieder brought Arnold to the sunny shores of California, it was the legendary Vince Gironda that helped mold the young Austrian's physique.That’s right! Vince Gironda, the iron guru was the first trainer of Arnold Schwarzenegger, and not even Arnold would escape Vince’s infamous attitude.



Entering the North Hollywood gym on the advice of Joe Wieder, the six-foot Austrian Oak, soon to be bodybuilding’s greatest athlete of all time introduced himself to Vince Gironda. As John Balik who witnessed the event recalls, Arnold walked into the gym, weighing approximately 255 pounds and stated in his heavy Austrian accent.

"I am Arnold Schwarzenegger, Mr Universe".

Vince removed his cigar out of his mouth and replied "You just look like a fat f*ck to me"!

In that one moment, Arnold’s lesson at Vince’s gym had begun. Vince had cut Arnold’s monster complex and made him understand that size was not all. As John recalls «from that moment on, Arnold’s body would never be that smooth again».  Vince’s brutal physique assessment helped Arnold clarify his vision of how to obtain a champion physique, and it forever changed the way he would prepare for competition. Instead of feeling disheartened, insulted, or threatened, Arnold extended his hand to Vince, and he would continue to train at Vince’s Gym under the tutelage of Vince Gironda for the next few months.



THE LESSONS BEGIN
Two weeks later, after losing the IFBB 1968 Mr. Universe to Frank Zane, Arnold realized Vince was right. Arnold soon got to work at Vince’s Gym, and Vince led Arnold to change a few things with his training, and in particular, with these weakpoints. Vince introduced Arnold to the preacher curl on the preacher bench for biceps. Vince also tweaked Arnold’s leg and shoulder routine to include a variety of side raises and hack squats and other leg movements.

Dick Tyler recalls Vince Gironda’s training strategy for improving Arnold’s physique in a rare article. Arnold had just arrived in America and had no place to stay, so he stayed with Don Peters who lived close to Vince’s Gym.

Time rushed by and before we knew it, it was time to meet Don Peters at his home. Don had been kind enough to offer his fabulous house to Arnold for a few days until he could find an apartment.This house is the one with the fantastic home gym, swimming pool, professional pool table, color TV, palm trees, and genuine California sunshine.



After a few days in this perfect place, Arnold moved into an apartment that happens to be a block or so away from Vince’s Gym, so you can guess where he’s training now. Every morning at Vince’s and every evening at Don Peters, this massive Austrian Oak bombs his muscles.

I recently asked Vince how Arnold was doing and I thought he was going to mount a bandstand to tell me.

“He’s a vast untapped reservoir of unused tissue.”

“What do you mean by that?” I asked.

“For one thing he’s never used a preacher bench before; he’s never trained his legs or shoulders correctly and only recently has he started working his waist hard and started taking supplements of any kind. The other day I put him on a new deltoid exercise and you could see the insertion in the humorous literally burst out of the skin while he was doing it, only to disappear when the pump was gone.”

Now Vince looked at me seriously. “Dick, I guarantee in six months he’ll put two inches on his arms and three inches on his shoulders. That’s six months from now.”

“But how will he cram on all that size?”

Vince walked away with a knowing smile. Don’t worry though, I’ll find out and let you in on any secrets. The Austrian Oak is in town and you’ll get all the information from Vince’s Italian Riviera.

 





ARNOLD ON VINCE GIRONDA
Arnold further elaborates on his experiences with Vince Gironda.

 When I first moved to California in 1968, I sometimes trained at Vince’s Gym in Studio City, owned by Vince Gironda.Vince was a bodybuilding pioneer with many radical theories about bodybuilding training, and he was always experimenting.

For example, he’d complete 30 sets of an exercise and, the next day, he’d know which part of a particular muscle had been doing the work by how sore it was. This would let him gauge how effective or ineffective an exercise was. For instance, if you did 30 sets of barbell curls and the next day your delts hurt more than your biceps, it would be clear that the delts had done an undue amount of the work. Therefore, you might want to perform an isolation exercise such as preacher curls instead, to take the delts out of play. Vince’s philosophy and the previous example underscore that not everything works for everybody, and that bodybuilding is an individual journey for each of us.



CUTTING UP ON VINCE DIETS
d.

I cut down and cut down and cut down; I chiseled and polished, rendering that animal mass I’d brought from Europe down to the work of art I wanted. I had jewel-like abdominals for the first time; it was the first time I knew there was such a thing as a low-carbohydrate diet. I’d never heard of special diets in Germany. There you ate and worked and grew.

 With the advice, he had obtained from Vince Gironda and the crew at Vince’s gym, he had trimmed off roughly 20 pounds of fat giving his physique a more defined and hard look. Arnold captured the 1969 IFBB Mr universe and decided to enter the 1969 Mr. Olympia competition. Although he lost to Sergio Oliva that year, Vince had laid the foundation necessary to capture the 7 Mr. Olympias that awaited Arnold.

ARNOLD’S TRANSITION TO GOLD’S GYM
Eventually, it is said that a combination of factors led to Arnold leaving Vince’s Gym and making the transition to Gold’s Gym. Firstly, according to Boyer Coe, Arnold didn’t get along with Vince. Secondly, Arnold enjoyed the sunny California atmosphere and enjoyed the hardcore bodybuilding scene emerging at Gold’s Gym….but that is another story.

 

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MILLARD WILLIAMSON....A TALE WORTH READING!
Millard (Mel) Williamson was born in Oakland, California in 1936. He graduated U C  Berkeley with a pharmaceutical degree, then worked as a biochemist for Dole Pineapple Corporation. Later, he produced the MLO (Muscle On) health food line, which was distributed and sold world wide. 
With his expanded rib cage capable of supporting a water glass, (the image has been photo-shopped) Mel's physique wins included the 1956 Mr. Muscle Beach award, and the 1962 AAU Mr. Western America crown.
In the mid 1960s, the AAU Physique Judging Committee began to employ a points system, based on factors other than a contestant's physical appearance. Much like the AAU Miss American Pageant, the judges began looking for articulate, well-rounded individuals, who if called upon, could represent the sport at the highest level. This ruling regarding male contestants lasted approximately five years.
To say these interviews got out-of-hand is putting it mildly. Contestants were showing up at prejudging's in tailor-made suits, shoes shined, and nails manicured. Others carried diploma's, scrapbooks, and To-Whom-It-May-Concern letters, hoping to impress the judges.
Millard's frustration over being interviewed when the same judges, from contest-to-contest, seemed, to him, to have become even more concerned regarding his athletic ability than his physique. At this particular event, he informed them that he was an expert archer with the abilities of the legendary William Tell. To prove his claim, he had brought a bow and arrows to the prejudging with idea of shooting apples off their heads.
At another event, a judge attempted to console Mel's runner-up placing by saying, "If it was not for your enormous handlebar moustache, you could have won the contest. I'm sure you would do better if you would just cut it back."
Mel took the judges advice and entered his next contest with the right side of his handlebar completely gone....and the left side....waxed and shinning in all its glory.

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https://www.chaosandpain.com/tips/tips-anybody-can-get-lean-bulk-first-then-worry-about-your-abs-the-story-of-bruce-randall/