The EFBB South Coast Contest was held this year in the Portsmouth Guildhall one week before Easter on Sunday the 9th April. As usual, Paul Smith put on a great show and there was a large and enthusiastic audience. 

Big H Harold Marillier presented the prizes to the winners in the U90 Kg Class, won quite convincingly by Paul Stenning from The Forest Gym

I was unable to go to the UKBFF South Coast Show this year and so I don’t have the facts for a full report. My impressions are based only on the photographs and chats to those who were there.

There were more competitors this year but it still seems that at the highest levels, where we expect to see the really impressive physiques — the U80, U90 and O90 Kg Classes — the numbers on stage are still too few.   The U90 Kg had 5 competitors but there was only one U80 and 2 in the O90 Kg.

Paul Stenning from The Forest Gym looked very full and sharp in winning the U90 Kg Class with Paul Jones from Health & Strength, Bournemouth in 2nd.  Dan Parker from The Training Room, Isle of Wight was 3rd.

Nicholas Anthony from Muscle Works in Bethnal Green was the winner of the O90 Kg and Steve Nicholls from Scot’s Gym in Melksham was the only U80 Kg man.  Mark Yates from Broadstone Leisure Club in Poole was the winner of the Intermediates and went on to win the Overall award.   He has an impressive physique with lots of potential; he has massive arms but needs more leg work.

Dean Harris from Kings Gym was the winner of the Masters beating out 7 other competitors.

Darius Tehrani won the First Timers out-muscling 12 other competitors. Darius is from the Cheetahs Gym in Hove and it was good to see so many competitors from this gym.   Like The Forest Gym they have been providing facilities for hardcore Bodybuilders for many, many years.

Mustaf Mohammad was a very popular star with a mass of mind-blowing muscle.

The Forest Gym donated the trophy for Overall winner being presented to Simon Yates by promoter Paul Smith

Dwain Chambers used Drugs — Shock! Horror!

Dwain Chambers was the British Sprinter caught up in the Balco Drugs affair.    You will remember that he failed a drugs test following the identification of a designer steroid, THG, produced by Balco Labs in San Francisco.   You may also remember that the only reason for the drug being discovered was that someone grassed.    That someone was a coach of other top level American athletes who thus removed some of the opposition.  The head of Balco co-operated with DEA investigations in the USA and received a prison sentence of just 4 months.  Not exactly crime of the century stuff.  Dwain Chambers was banned for 2 years and on 17th June 2006 he returned to competition in UK athletics.   When he walked onto the track in Gateshead for his first public appearance he was cheered.   Yet again, it is perfectly clear that Joe Public does not care at all about what drugs an athlete uses as long as he wins.    Good luck to him.   In a nauseous, piece of sanctimonious claptrap, Patrick Collins writing in The Mail on Sunday went on about high moral standards and parents keeping their kids out of athletics because of drugs, etc. etc.    Another old fart who cannot accept that athletes do what they need to do to win. The idea that no athletes are getting away with drug use is so ludicrous as to be hardly worth discussing.  At least Bodybuilders don’t have to read or listen to such rubbish.

If you go for Bodybuilders with freaky mass there are few more awesome than Branch Warren.  In this picture he looks near contest condition and still manages to squat with 310 kgs [685 lbs in old money]and without a six layer rubber and Lycra bungee jumping suit either — but he is a big strong boy, Harry

More Money for Bodybuilders & Power lifters

Bodybuilding and Power Lifting are minority sports and will remain so.    There are many who would like the sports to get more publicity, more support, more sponsors and more competitors.   In general terms it will not happen. We should remember that being a minority sport is the norm.  We see footballers, golfers and snooker players making vast amounts of money participating in their sports but most sports generate little cash even when there is massive support.  In the UK motor bike racing in all it forms gets lots of support from Joe Public but most competitors beg, borrow and scrounge the money and the bits to let them carry on racing.  We have more competitors in motor cycle sport in the Uk [including Northern Ireland] than the whole of the rest of Europe put together.   But there is damn all TV time and so there is no sponsorship.

We all feel that bodybuilders should be better paid.   In fact few bodybuilders get paid anything at all.   A few like Ronnie Coleman and Jay Cutler make a reasonable amount of money but they are just a handful.   Bodybuilding and power Lifting are very costly because of the food consumption but most competitors have to buy everything themselves.

Both sports have an additional problem.  Drugs. It is a simple truth that virtually all competitors in these sports use performance enhancing drugs at some point in their training.   What is more, the competitors want to use these drugs. There are contests for drug tested bodybuilders but support is poor and few bodybuilders want to go down the drug free route. It is not cheating.  I know what bodybuilders use and I have a pretty good idea of the combinations of substances and the quantities,  But since everyone is at it and everyone knows that everyone is at it, it cannot be called cheating. Outside our sports there are politicians and self-righteous men in suits and blazers who think that sport is something so pure it hurts and that using anything to improve performance is a corruption of this fantasy.  Any suggestion that anyone has failed a drugs test leads to newspaper headlines and an athlete can have his or her career ruined because they just wanted to be the best.  Often you do not even need to be guilty. Remember Greg Rusedski and and his drug test failure traced to an amount of nadralone so tiny that it would not have made a gnat grow and he had to go to court to argue his case — and even then they couldn’t bring themselves to face the truth and tell the testers to “Bugger off!   His drug intake is immeasurably small.  Get serious!” There are many whose sport — like bodybuilding — will never make it into the newspapers unless someone fails a drug test.  It is this big negative publicity that will put off big corporate advertisers and sponsors and without these sponsors it is unlikely that there can ever be big money in bodybuilding. 

What is less easy to accept is the failure of large supplement companies to put more money into the sport.   These are specialist companies in a specialist business that turns over billions of dollars in the USA every year and many millions of dollars elsewhere.   Many sell their products using top level bodybuilders in their adverts and their company images are not going to be damaged by bodybuilders failing drugs tests because [1] at the present time, bodybuilders are not drug tested, [2] their prime customers buy on the basis of the athletes they support and these customers do not care a monkey’s about drugs tests.  It is likely that drug testing in some form will have to be introduced into the sport because of the happenings in America. There the Establishment will insist that drug tests are introduced and if the sport does not do so voluntarily there will be legislation.  And this could have a knock-on effect around the world.  

But as long as bodybuilders and power lifters are associated with drugs — and they use far greater quantities than athletes in other sports — then blue-chip companies will not give their support.   And everyone should realize that if competitors want to use drugs then they cannot allow the sports to get more public profiles.    As long as these remain minority semi-underground activities then the negative publicity from drugs will be minimized

Then there is TV.  Very conservative are TV companies.   Only the cable companies will go for bodybuilding and power lifting because both are cheap and can fill acres of empty screen time.   But the BBC and ITV concentrate on wall-to-wall football plus some rugby, golf and snooker.   They even show us lots of athletics. Why? It is hardly a well supported sport [see opposite]. 

Petrol head Bodybuilder Lee Priest prepares his race car.

Bodybuilding Radio

Pro Bodybuilding Radio is One Year old in June 2006.   This Monday Night Show is available on the Internet and Bob Cicherello has been an authortive host.  It looks like they will be joined this month with Muscle Radio.   Lets wish them all good luck for the future.