Hard questions for the Guvenator
8 March 2005If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!
I think my buddies in the mainstream media are missing the boat by asking Arnold Schwarzenegger about his past steroid usage (admitted) or drugs in baseball. The real question is why he lends his name to the Arnold Classic, the biggest gathering of steroid abusers on the face of the planet with the possible exception of Joe Weiders Mr. Olympia.
Neither the Arnold Classic or the Olympia test for steroids and both offer $100,000 plus dollars to the winner. The result is all-out chemical warfare in the mens and womans bodybuilding championships, the powerlifting competition (cash is given to winners and record breakers) and the strongman competition where the winner gets a brand new Hummer automobile.
The result in a collection of drug monsters that is off the freakiness charts; men weighing 270-pounds with 3% body fat, women weighing 160 with 6% body fat and voices deeper than Barry White. The abuse is rampant and obvious and surreptitiously sanctioned. Like an 800-pound elephant in the room that no one wants to mention, up until this year the attitude was, so what, who cares. What changed was Arnold becoming governor and the baseball steroid scandal.
As the chief law enforcement officer of the nations most populace state, it is a little tough for Arnold to preach an anti-drug message than promote a competition that is without a doubt the largest gathering of steroid abusers on the face of the planet. Do you have any idea the sheer volume of drugs a top bodybuilder consumes to compete at the top levels of the IFBB? (International Federation of Bodybuilders)
A few years back when I worked as a writer for Muscle & Fitness I interviewed the Weider bodybuilders under contract and off the record the top guys were generally quite free with information regarding which ones and how many. Growth hormone, oral and injectable steroids, insulin, thyroid stimulators and basal metabolic accelerators would routinely add up to a $30,000 per year performance enhancing drug bill and that is at the marked-down prices top professionals et. I spoke with one top pro immediately after the Arnold one year who was incredibly relieved he had taken 5th place, The $5,000 prize money would cover the cost of the drugs I took for this contest. Its been an open secret that the fans want the freaks and when the IFBB tested back in the era of Haney the rumor was that attendance plummeted.
Presto! The drug testing that had been introduced with much fanfare and righteous resolution was quietly put back on the shelf. It was ironic that an old friend e-mailed me an article Monday wherein Arnold announced at this years competition that he was calling a summit meeting to get the drugs out of bodybuilding so I guess that rather than getting swamped by the steroid Tsunami, the Terminator is grabbing a board and going to surf the wave to shore.
It was incredible to see him onstage with the female who won the Arnold Classic this year she looked positively ghoulish with her skin stretched so tight across her skull that it appeared one quick jerk would cause her face to split. She packed more muscle than Franco Columbo at his peak and possessed a much lower body fat percentile. It will be a revolutionary year for professional bodybuilding: if Arnold takes a mind to do it he can single-handedly eliminate the vast majority of drug abuse from bodybuilding; particularly if he foots the bill for out-of-competition testing. Time will tell.
They could attempt to cover the problem with a fig leaf but something tells me that he wants this potential embarrassment to disappear right now - totally and completely.
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