When I was a Muscle and Fitness-obsessed lad, I used to have to wait around for a good five weeks or so after the Mr. Olympia contest to find out that Lee Haney (or, later, Dorian Yates) had won again.  No one I knew cared about bodybuilding; the contest got no coverage in the mainstream press, and even if I could have researched it to death and found out who won before Weider covered it in his magazines, that would have required that I admit that I was interested in bodybuildlng, and you know, that's just weird.

Anyway, thanks to the miracle of the internet I was able to watch pieces of last weekend's Mr. Olympia contest online.

From where I'm sitting, it was a strange, sad affair.

As befits such an unusual pastime, the contest itself was a strange event.  Joe Weider, looking and sounding wobbly, came out first, and gamely told the audience he loved them, before muttering, as he left the stage, "Give the athletes a lot of support.  They need it."  I think he meant "they deserve it," but given the gaunt, dehydrated, drugged behemoths lurking backstage, Weider's comment was probably spot-on.

Ben Weider (my spellchecker keeps wanting me to write "weirder") then came on and thanked everyone under the sun, especially his brother Joe and, in one odd moment, himself.  Towards the end of his comments he made a rather desultory reference to "making the sport of bodybuilding part of the Olympic Games."  Seeing as that was a nominal goal of the Weiders as far back in the '80's, I have to ask:  how hard are they trying? 

After Ben came a guy named David--ahem--Pecker, who was pleased that the Mr. Olympia weekend now featured additional events, including a powerlifting event, some UFC fights, and a bikini contest, which he told us leeringly he was very excited about.  Pecker suggested that the inclusion of these other events implied that bodybuilding was becoming more popular and mainstream, but it would be easy enough to make the opposite argument.  A few more folks came and went, including Ben Weider one more time to thank someone else he'd forgotten.

Throughout, I was surprised that the crowd was so tepid:  weren't they the 'in' crowd?  Wasn't this their Super Bowl?  Where were the screaming, stomping, whistling, bug-eyed fans from the circus tent at the beginning of Pumping Iron?

But the Vegas crowd sat back, as if exhausted, giving limp support to even the speakers' most hearty declarations:  "The prize money for this year's contest is up thirty-seven percent!" Pecker declared, sounding a bit like Joe Biden spouting impressive statistics.  Scattered applause.  Was the assembled crowd aware that their sport was dying, despite all the grinning declarations of growth and health?  It was like hearing a crowd's reaction when a modern politician tries to pull a "The state of the Union is strong"  on us.

The competition itself was anti-climactic:  the show was slick but lifeless, save for a few athletes, notably Melvin Anthony, whose robot dance and stripper moves managed to get the crowd at least a little bit excited.  Jay Cutler, a favorite who won the contest in '06 and '07, looked mountainous but posed to sedate, plaintive music, as if to say "I may be big, but I've got feelings too!"  Only at the end of his routine, when a snippet of Schoolhouse Rock's "Three is a magic number" came on did Cutler seem to be enjoying himself. 

The winner, Dexter Jackson, was a smiley, diminutive guy upon whom it appeared impossible to cram any more muscle anywhere.  Cutler, who was taller and bigger but appeared less pleasingly formed, took second.  As ever in bodybuilding contests, I wondered, was Jackson really all that much better than his competition?  He came off as confident certainly, but not a dominant champion; rather, a hard-working journeyman whose night had come.


Despite the proclamations of the corporate guys, I'm strangely heartened by the fact that bodybuilding remains firmly marginalized.  Clearly, the elephant-in-the-room pharmaceutical aspect of the sport, the male-beauty-contest vibe, and the ongoing question of whether we can really call bodybuilding a "sport" at all conspire to keep it on the fringes, but I think the activity has fundamentally reached a point of diminishing returns. 

The bodies were already approaching freakish in the '70's when Arnold Schwarzenegger dominated the Mr. Olympia contest at 6' 2" and 235 pounds.  At this year's contest, one athlete came in at that height carrying almost 300 pounds.  Does anyone in their right mind want to look like that?  And does anyone think it's possible without a Walgreen's worth of drugs?  Even the illusion of health in the sport has been all but abandoned. 

Adding to the dip in popularity of the proceedings was the distinct lack of outsized personalities:  instead, we see nerves, insecurity, guys like Cutler who look for all their size and strength like they'd rather be somewhere else, doing something less vain, less self-consciously...self-conscious.

But you can't apologize if you're going to be be a bodybuilder; your every move has got to scream "I'm here, I'm huge, and you're going to love me."  Schwarzenegger had a massive build for his time, but I think it was in large part his unapologetic narcissism, the male vanity that his most tenacious interviewers could scratch and claw and analyze to death and find nothing underneath but more male vanity, that made him dominate for all those years.  Nowadays, no matter how big the bodies, we still sense the scared kid underneath, the inner "Mac" who once had sand kicked in his face, doing his best to get back at the bullies.

But again, I consider that a good sign:  we are losing interest in a sport where muscle size is pursued for its own sake.  Maybe we're starting to recognize the limitations of such a narrow view of fitness for ourselves, as well.