Olympia 2014 Review: The Winners

It wasn’t just Iris Kyle who repeated her 2013 victory. I kind of wish I’d done a post with all five of the Olympia winners last year because if I had, I could have largely done a simple cut and paste job this time around! But although three of the winners across the five divisions were the same as last year, two women, neither of them American, were winning Olympia titles for the first time. Here they all are…

BIKINI: ASHLEY KALTWASSWER (USA)

left to right: Yeshaira Robles (4th), India Paulino (6th), Janey Layug (2nd), Ashley Kaltwasser, Stacey Alexander (3rd), Amanda Latona (5th).

A former school and college athlete in her native Ohio, Ashley was inspired to compete by her former high school track coach, who had been a figure competitor. She is trained by Summer Montabone, who was herself a former fitness competitor.

She’s two for two at the Olympia, making the 25-year-old Ashley the first woman to take the Bikini Olympia title twice. This was her fifth competition of the year, and her fourth win – she finished 2nd in New York (to Yeshaira Robles).

Ashley says: It totally makes my day when someone lets me know that I inspire them. It makes all of the hard work so worth while! I enjoy being an ambassador for the sport. 2x Bikini Olympia Champion… I like the sound of that!

FIGURE: NICOLE WILKINS (USA)

left to right: Gennifer Strobo (6th), Ann Titone (4th), Candice Keene (2nd), Nicole Wilkins, Candice Lewis (3rd), Latorya Watts (5th).

An inspiration to FMS‘ favourite “Normal Person”, Emily Chorley, it’s our pleasure to feature Nicole here, the champ in a division that, quite honestly, I don’t usually pay that much attention to. Given my surprise at the amount of muscle Nicole and many of her fellow competitors displayed on stage in Vegas, that may be about to change!

This was Nicole’s fourth Figure Olympia win, which is a record, but certainly not her first record by any means. Ever since her early years of competition, breaking records has been her business. She was the first woman ever to win titles in two divisions at the same pro qualifying event – Figure and Fitness champ at the 2007 Team Universe. She was the youngest ever winner of the Figure Olympia, aged 25 in 2009, and the first Figure competitor to win FIVE pro events in the same year (2011). She retained her Olympia titles in 2011 and 2013 (the first woman to retain the title twice, of course!), and now, aged 30, this former gymnast from Michigan is the first to win four.

Nicole says: To be successful you have to be willing to do whatever it takes. You have to put your heart and soul into it and be willing to make sacrifices. You have to be dedicated and push yourself past your comfort level. Only until then, until you want it more than just “kinda”, will you be amazed at what you can accomplish.

FITNESS: OKSANA GRISHINA (Russia)

left to right: Fiona Harris (6th), Bethany Cisternino (4th), Regiane Da Silva (2nd), Oksana Grishina, Tanji Johnson (3rd), Myriam Capes (5th).

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, what I know about the Fitness division I know because of Oksana Grishina. And now that serial Fitness Olympia winner Adela Garcia has retired, Oksana could be set to dominate for many years to come.

As with the Figure division, this year’s Olympia definitely gave me a new level of appreciation for the Fitness competitors. For some unknown reason it had never occurred to me before just how difficult it must be for them to perform their amazing routines while their bodies are so depleted. And no other competitor, it seems to me, can ever match Oksana’s routines. This one was no exception, with Bodybuilding.com writer Cassie Smith suggesting that it was good enough to take her to victory after she’d been judged only 4th or 5th in the first, “physique”, round.

I reckon you’ll like Oksana backstage before her routine on Flex Online.

Oksana says: I still feel compelled to try to improve as an athlete… to do better, to be better. Competition is in my blood and I am a perfectionist. I love to compete against the best athletes in the world and I hope, through my performances and my hard work, to leave a lasting impression on the professional fitness world and be an inspiration for future fitness competitors.

PHYSIQUE: JULIANA MALACARNE (Brazil)

left to right: Karina Nascimento (4th), Dana Linn Bailey (2nd), Juliana Malacarne, Tycie Coppett (3rd), Sabrina Taylor (5th).

Dana Linn Bailey and Juliana Malacarne standing side-by-side in stark comparison was the moment for which everyone had been waiting. It would be worth the price of admission, a genuine competitive race for a coveted title, is how Steve Wennerstrom described the aptly-named Women’s Physique Showdown, and even a hardened old female bodybuilding fan like me has to admit that the best competition at the 2014 Olympia was provided by these two amazing women.

And even the most ardent Dana Linn Bailey fan had to admit that La Malacarne had the beating of her this time. In a sport where so often the fans feel the judges got it wrong, no one has argued that Juliana wasn’t worth her $15,000 first place.

She spent her early 30s as a figure competitor with quote too much muscle unquote, rarely in the top 10, and often outside the top 15. How times have changed! As soon as the Physique division was created she started winning pro titles, and now, aged 40, she has become, I think I’m right in saying, the first ever Brazilian Olympia winner.

Watch the denouement of Dana Linn and Juliana’s battle here.

And, by the way, can anyone tell me why, when you have a top 6 in every other division, you only get a top 5 called out for the final posedown in Physique?

BODYBUILDING: IRIS KYLE (USA)

left to right: Anne Freitas (6th), Alana Shipp (4th), Alina Popa (2nd), Iris Kyle, Debi Laszewski (3rd), Yaxeni Oriquen (5th).

Should Kyle decide to compete for another dozen years, Steve Wennerstrom wrote, after Iris won her first Ms O in 2004, the mind boggles at what she may accomplish. 

Well, it turned out not to be a dozen years, but what Iris has accomplished did turn out to be mind-boggling. On top of her seven Ms International titles, this was her ninth Ms Olympia win in a row, and her tenth in total. And with the medal around her neck, before the ink had fully dried on the judges scorecards, Iris Kyle announced her retirement from competition on the stage she has dominated for over a decade.

And sadly, this final act of a great champion (perhaps the greatest ever champion in not just female bodybuilding, but the whole of bodybuilding) may well be, if the reaction to the news among many so-called “fans” of the sport is anything to go by, the most popular thing she has ever done.

She deserves better. MUCH better. So we’ll say no more about it right now, but later in the week FMS will be giving some (long overdue) BIG BIG love to Iris Kyle.

For now, we’ll just say congratulations to Iris and to all the Olympia winners!

Media Watch III: Good News!

In our look at some of the British women who have recently been featured in their local media (see Media Watch I), FMS noted that in a couple of these articles it was reported that “lots more”, “record numbers” of women were taking up bodybuilding.

And we didn’t have to wait long for some stats on the subject to turn up.

The Daily Mail, that most female-muscle-friendly of British newspapers, confirmed the very good news that there has, indeed, been a huge increase in the number of young women working out multiple times per week. A survey of 2,000+ gym-goers revealed a 62% increase in the number of women working out at least four days in every seven over the last twelve months, and that the average age of these women is just 24.

Furthermore, the survey, carried out by a sports supplements supplier, revealed that “as well as hitting the gym more often, these women are increasingly using supplements such as protein shakes to maximise the effectiveness of their workout” and, as a result, they have been dubbed the “Protein Princesses”.

But before you start imagining a generation of young women all wanting to look like Alina Popa, I should point out that the article does say that “unlike men, their main motivations aren’t to build muscle”. Burning fat and achieving a “toned and lean” look is what they want, and rather than taking inspiration from the magnificent muscular women this blog is devoted to, “health-conscious celebrities such as Miranda Kerr, Kelly Brook, and Kim Kardashian” are their role models, according to the Mail.

However, I suspect this may not be the whole story. The survey did not include a question about motivation. The assertion that the rise is due to “the increase in celebrities posting results of their fitness regimes on social media and the rise of celebrities now spotted with protein shakes in their hand” is purely the opinion of a spokesman for the company that ordered the survey in the first place.

An industry professional also quoted in the article has a quite different explanation. “The number of women who are immersing themselves fully into a health and fitness lifestyle is growing. Mainly because of the greater awareness of the benefits of exercise and how it relates to everything from our social lives, food and fashion,” according to the interestingly named Jéan LK, Head Trainer and owner of Timed Fitness.

Surely these theories aren’t the whole truth, though. Surely at least some of these Protein Princesses have taken their “fitspiration” from the less famous and more muscular. Thankfully, it’s not exclusively celebrities like Lucy Mecklenburgh and Millie Mackintosh (don’t ask, I have no idea, they just happened to be mentioned in the article!) who post the results of their hard work on social media, as the majority of today’s illustrations testify. And you don’t have to go back very far in the FMS archive to find evidence of this. Only a couple of weeks ago we learned and reported that Emily Chorley had been inspired by images of Olya Haidner and Nicole Wilkins (see Emily Chorley: Just a Normal Person?) – surely Emily isn’t the only one.

And anyway, even if women are inspired to go to the gym by the less muscular and more famous, and even if they go there with no intention of building muscle, so what? At least, they’re going. And as far as I’m aware, there’s no better place than the gym to get inspired to build muscle. If only 1 in every 1,000 (or fewer than that even) of the Protein Princesses end up deciding that they want to be more than just “toned and lean”, then that’s still a lot more female muscle in the UK than ever before.

And that, I think you will agree, is most definitely good news.

Enjoy!