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MS. OLYMPIA 2001:

CONTEST REPORT
November 26 - Mandalay Bay, Las Vegas

By Bill Dobbins

INTRODUCTION
The good news is that the Ms. Olympia 2001 took place - which was also the good news last year.. And that attendance was good if not spectacular. In fact, there was some reason to fear that the entire Olympia Weekend would be cancelled in the wake of the September 11th terrorist attacks. Or, that it would be a promotional and financial disaster because the fans would be unwilling to get on an airplane and fly to Las Vegas. Especially fans from Europe. Thankfully, none of those fears came to pass.

In 2000, the Ms. Olympia was added to the weekend almost as an afterthought - which was better than not having it held at all. But there were only 12 women in last year's lineup, and when divided into two classes made for a less-than-impressive showing. Added to that, there was no separate prejuding for the women bodybuilders in 2000. Instead, prejuding was a rushed affair tacked onto the evening show before the finals.

At this year's Ms. Olympia, there was 17 competitors - a distinct improvement. And it was decided to hold prejudging as part of the Olympia Expo, free to those attending - a strategy pioneered at the Arnold Weekend in Columbus. Unfortunately, there were two problems with how this was done:

PREJUDGING
(1) There was NO additional lighting in use during prejudging, just the mixed lights from the conventional hall itself. Physiques under this kind of lighting often appear softer than they are and the odd color of the lighting can do strange things to skin color. It also makes for very poor quality photos. Prejudging photos on the Webzine/Gallery are therefore presented in black & white.

(2) Prejudging for the Ms. Olympia and the preliminaries for the Fitness Olympia were held AT THE SAME TIME in separate halls. This means it was impossible for the press or spectators to see both events. The reason for having the two contests staged in different places made sense, since this meant that the vendors in both locations would get the benefit of access to the audiences attracted by the competitions. But why at the same time? "We want to get out of here at a decent hour," explained Wayne Demilia? A decent hour? What exactly does this have to do with staging a contest so that the entire audience gets to see all of it. As it was, people had to choose between fitness and bodybuilding. Given that both types of competition have limited audiences, it doesn't make sense to limit it even more when not necessary. One event scheduled for 10 AM and the other for 1 PM would have been a much better idea.

There were a few surprises at the prejudging. In the lightweights, Juliette Bergmann, coming out of a retirement in which she served for 10 years as an international IFBB judge, displayed the same outstanding symmetry for which she has always been famous. She didn't seem quite as hard as might be thought ideal, but with the odd lighting it was hard to say for sure. Andrulla Blanchette definitely seemed slightly off from her conditioning of last year, but not far off. A total of 8 out of 10 judges gave Juliette first place in round one, and 7 of 10 judges voted her first in round two - with Andrulla getting the other number one placings.

One thing about Juliette, she is absolutely the BEST in bodybuilding at standing at the back of the stage waiting to be called out for comparisons. Her years of experience have taught her exactly how to stand in order to show the best qualities of her physique. When your eyes drifted away from the comparison taking place and looked at the women standing in the back, they were inevitably drawn to Juliette.

One disappointment was that Dayana Cadeau was not as trim as in previous shows, with her waist as small and tight. Dayana has been making remarkable progress in improving her symmetry and needs to continue to do so. However, if Mr. Olympia Ronnie Coleman can show up at a contest with a somewhat too large waist - in spite of having learned that is not a good idea - apparently this can happen to anyone.

The heavyweight match-up was even more anticipated. Rumour had it that Vickie Gates would be abandoning her "guidelines-inspired" formula of soft upper body and no legs and would return to the excellent form that resulted in her first Ms. International win. There was also the fact that, despite having totally ignored Iris Kyle last year, after her superb showing at the Ms. International the judges might be more inclined to place her as she truly deserved. Finally, there was the question of whether Valentina Chepiga - one of the smallest of the heavyweights - could repeat and garner her second Ms. Olympia title.

It only took a few comparisons for the reality of the situation to become apparent. Valentina simply didn't look big or hard enough for this group - although she was still the most aesthetic and glamorous woman on the stage. Vickie had indeed improved her muscularity and brought up her legs from previous contests, but was not yet back to matching her best performances. And Iris Kyle was as magnificent as we have come to expect - hard, cut, symmetrical, with a waist nearly as small as that of Juliette Bergmann.

Actually, the whole heavyweight line-up looked very good. Yaxeni Oriquen, who was invited to the contest at the last moment, showed she had indeed been a deserving invitee. Lesa Lewis was in the best shape in years - probably not the best she could be, but a definite improvement. But even at 90% or so Lesa is awesome and exciting to watch. Probably the most overlooked competitor among the heavyweights was Betty Pariso, winner of the 2001 Jan Tana. To my eye she seemed a total package, right up there with the top 3. But the skin coloring she used was an odd shade - a kind of copper-green. Maybe her strange skin color was exaggerated by the mixed-color lights, but in any event the judges disliked it intensely (as they told me afterwards) and this cost Betty a considerable number of points.

THE FINALS
The finals went off smoothly. The women posed well - a definite improvement from just a few years ago. They seemed a little lost on the vast stage at the Mandalay Bay - even with both classes on stage at the same time - but it was better than it had been with much fewer competitors in 2000.

In the lightweights, Juliette got all first place votes in both the posing round and the posedown, Andrulla all second. This is somewhat odd in that two or three judges evidently completely changed their minds between Friday morning and Friday night and decided to vote for the majority. Some said they improved Juliette's placing because she posed so well. But under IFBB rules, the third round involves presentation of the phyhsique but it is not a "posing round" - that is, the physique is still being judged, not how good the posing routine might be. However, even if the judges had stayed consistent to their prejuding evaluations Juliette would still have emerged as lightweight class winner.

The reason that the IFBB rules regarding judging this round is important is that, in the heavyweight class, 6 out of 10 judges had Valentina in first place in round three.. This is in contrast to Valentina having only receive one first place vote total in rounds one and two. Did the judges think she had the best physique in the class as they watched her do her individual posing routine? Or were they judging her posing and perhaps her overall appearance rather than declaring they thought she was the best bodybuilder in the class? Evidently, most of the judges decided to score the round as if it were posing that was supposed to be assessed. On that basis, it is not hard to see how Valentina would do so well. Valentina is a PHENOMENAL poser, probably the best in the whole contest. But that doesn't change the fact that all rounds in a bodybuilding contest are physique rounds, and the "free posing" round is simply one in which the competitor gets a chance to show her or his physique at its dynamic best.

Perhaps the IFBB needs to remind the judges again of the rule that (1) round one is not a symmetry round, (2) round two is not a muscularity round and (3) round three is not a posing round. The difference in rounds is only in how the physique is presented - the judges are supposed to be looking at EVERYTHING in every round.

How the judges treat the round system was also apparent in the difference in the scores received by Iris Kyle round by round. None of the judges gave her first place in round one but 9 out of 10 had her first in the second round. If you are judging everything in every round, how could she jump from third to first in just a few minutes? Obviously, because judges were trying to separate "symmetry" from "muscularity" is if they weren't both aspects of the same physique. The opposite was true of Vickie Gates, who got lots of first place votes in round one and much fewer in round two, manifesting the same incorrect interpretation of the IFBB judging rules.

Anyway, this back-and-forth seesawing between Iris and Vickie continued through the contest until, when the final scores were announced, it turned out they had tied - with Iris winning by virtue of the IFBB tie-breaking rule (she had more first place votes). Actually, this was a near thing. Vickie Gates at her absolute best is indeed a worthy opponent for Iris Kyle. But Vickie wasn't at her absolute best and hasn't been for a couple of years. So what we nearly had is one more instance (last year's Ms. Olympia, the 2001 Ms. International) where Iris Kyle received unfair treatment from the judges. Thankfully, that didn't happen in judging the heavyweight class and hopefully Vicki will continue her efforts to develop her physique back to its full potential so in future when we see these two going against each other it will truly be a "battle of the titans."

THE OVERALL
It is a truism in sports that, all things being equal, the bigger competitor tends to beat the smaller one. Looking at the size difference between Juliette Bergmann and Iris Kyle on stage during the posedown for the overall, it seemed this might well be the case. Juliette looked suprisingly competitive against her larger opponent, but Iris was much more muscular and, as mentioned above, had a waist nearly as small as her Dutch challenger. However, the judges opted for Juliette, and she was declared Ms. Olympia 2001, much to the delight of her fans.

THE CONTROVERSY
The only aspect of Juliette Bergmann's Ms. Olympia victory that can be viewed as suspect is a political one. For the past 10 years, Juliette has been an international judge, working alongside the same judges who decided the outcome of this contest. There is no other sport I can think of where a judge of longstanding experience gets up from the table, goes up on stage and is evaluated by her colleagues and friends. This is a bizarre occurence of the sort that only seems to happen in the IFBB (think 1980, when Arnold won a contest promoted by his business partner, who had a hand in selecting a number of the judges, with yet another of his business partners also sitting on the judging panel.)

Talking to fans and industry insiders after the contest, it was pretty much accepted that Juliette deserved the lightweight victory - especially since Andrulla Blanchette was not quite at 100%, But there was a far more mixed reaction to her victory in the overall. Many who applauded this seemed to do so more because they were such fans of or even friends with Juliette. Others put it down to "politics as usual" in the very political IFBB. This is not to say that it is clear and definitive that Iris Kyle deserved the overall or that Juliette only won because her colleagues were the ones doing the judging. Juliette Bergmann is such a good bodybuilder that making such an assumption is not justified nor fair to her.. But this situation is just another exmaple of how lax and confused IFBB policies can be, especially where judging is concerned. There seems to have been no consideration that allowing Juliette to compete while she was still an active IFBB judge might at least "look bad." This isn't Juliette's fault, but it does point up problems the IFBB has in thinking things through.

Then again, an organization that can't enforce the rule that "standing relaxed" doesn't mean twisting from the waist, flexing the triceps and flaring out the lats shouldn't really be expected to require the judges understand how the round system works, much less to be aware of the possibility that people will assume that politics are directing the outcome when a group of judges undertakes to judge a contest in which one of their number is competing.

THE SCORESHEETS
Given the criticisms leveled at the federation above, it is nice to be able to compliment them as well. For years, we have been unable to view the individual judges scoring in IFBB pro events. We got the totals, but not the details as to how each judge scored each round. This year, thanks to the computer skills of Italian IFBB official Carlo Teani, this scoring is finally accessible, and you'll find these new and detailed scoresheets published on this website.

There was one problem regarding scoresheets, however, None seems to exist for the overall. Apparently Jim Manion counted the votes and verbally communicated who the winner was, but nothing was written down and there is no official, signed scoresheet to indicate the outcome of this competition. There is no reason to think that Jim Manion's declaration was incorrect, or that the judges didn't vote for Juliette (by a score of 8 to 2, according to Jim) but this is another case where proper procedures are lacking. To have an official score, you need an official scoresheet signed by the official in charge...just as we have for the rest of the contest. Again, I have no doubt of the outcome nor do I think anyone else should have such a doubt. But given the level of the competition, the importance of the IFBB, the money at stake and the ambitions on the part of Ben Weider to have bodybuilding included in the Olympics, it would seem advisable to have business done in a somewhat more buisness-like manner.

 

 

 

 

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