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FITNESS INTERNATIONAL 2002 - CONTEST REPORT

inscrutable \in-SKROO-tuh-bul\, adjective:
Difficult to fathom or understand; difficult to be explained or accounted for satisfactorily; obscure; incomprehensible; impenetrable; as, an inscrutable design or event.

By Bill Dobbins

For those who may not be familiar with my view of fitness let me begin by repeating that I don't believe an actual "contest report" on fitness is possible - at least not in the sense of writing coverage of a bodybuilding competition. The fitness competitors are attractive and in great shape, many of them are able to perform very impressive routines, but what kind of "standards" the judges use to determine the placing of each of the women has always remained a mystery to me. The Fitness International 2002 was no exception.
.......Adelina Fridmansky......Susie Curry...........Jenny Worth

For example, the first call out in prejudging was Susie Curry, Jenny Worth and Adelina Friedmansky. When the call out was announced somebody behind me muttered, "Why am I not surprised?" I understood just what he meant. These three women are the ones you EXPECT the judges to call out - because these are the three women the judges usually call out. Or at least often call out. Explaining why is a different subject. For example, you can answer the question "Why is Britney Spears so popular?" by saying "Because so many people like her." But this describes rather than explains. The same logic applies in fitness. Certain fitness competitors get call outs and high placings because the judges like the way they look. The reasons for this remain inscrutable.

However, if you come to such events from a bodybuilding background (and this contest is sanctioned by the International Federation of BODYBUILDERS) it is difficult to be impressed the Susie Curry or Adelina Friedmansky purely on the basis of physique (they look much more muscular in photos, believe me). Not that they look bad. They are fit and look like athletes, but the athletes they look like are gymnasts. Jenny Worth has a slighty more muscular physique, but is not as developed as, say, Jen Hendershott or Stacy Simons? What standard is being used that makes Adelinia, Susie and Jenny the first call out of the contest instead of some of these others?

subjective
\Sub*jec"tive\, a. [L. subjectivus: cf. F. subjectif.] 1. Of or pertaining to a subject.
2. Especially, pertaining to, or derived from, one's own consciousness, in distinction from external observation; ralating to the mind, or intellectual world, in distinction from the outward or material excessively occupied with, or brooding over, one's own internal states.

This is why I feel you can report what happened in a fitness contest, but you can't really explain why or evaluate if the judges got it right or not, as is often possible in bodybuilding.Comparing Valentina Chepiga with Yaxeni Oriquen you have a certain amount of objective criteria to go by. You know what a bodybuilders is "supposed to look like." What is a fitness competitor "supposed to look like"? What goals are involved and standards are to be applied? Officials can tell you they are looking for fit bodies that aren't too muscular or athletic physiques that would appeal to the average person or whatever. But how do you apply such vague descriptions to making anything other than totally subjective decisions in a fitness contest? That's something nobody has ever been able to adequately explain.

ob·jec·tive   Pronunciation Key  (b-jktv)
adj.
1. Of or having to do with a material object.
2. Having actual existence or reality.
3. Uninfluenced by emotions or personal prejudices: an objective critic.
4. Based on observable phenomena; presented factually: an objective appraisal.

Here's a major problem with fitness - an observer can't sit in the audience, look at the line-up and decide who "should" place where, as you can (more or less) in bodybuilding. You can only try to guess which competitors the JUDGES will think are most deserving. You also have no way of knowing how the judges scored the "mandatory round" ("Here's an idea, let's cover up all these beautiful bodies with black suits so we can't see them!") or the performances. So even if you could rank the competitors standing on stage by any sort of objective standards you still couldn't tell by looking at them how they probably deserve to be placed.
Klaudia Kinska
Jenny Worth

Again, what underlying standard of fitness judging has determined that Susie Curry's physique is better than Laura Mak's, or that Adelina should be placed ahead of Nicole Hobbs? What about Klaudia Kinska? Judges give reasons that seem more rationalizations than explanations. Even the oft-expressed suspicion that some of the top female fitness competitors are scored higher because they are managed by JM Manion can't be the answer because several of JM's clients don't place well at all. So the mystery is much deeper than political influence (although in the absence of any real objective standards you would expect politics to play a somewhat more significant role).

At the conclusion of the finals, Susie Curry won the contest, Jenny Worth placed second, in part due to her usual inventive and impressive performance routine. There are a lot of excellent gymnasts in fitness but Jenny is one of those competitors whose routine people would actually pay to see.

In the end, it turned out that 3rd place was given to Jen Hendershott rather than Adelina, so that first call out was not indicative of the judges' final assessment of the lineup. Why did Jen beat Adelina? Given the vagueness of fitness judging standards, there was no way to know why Jen "should" have or shouldn't have placed 3rd. That's just the way it was.

Thankfully there were only 14 women in the contest so the judges so the audience was spared the extreme tediousness of sitting through 25 or 30 performances as happens in some contests. The routines themselves are usually very entertaining. But after a dozen or so it can get to be too much of a good thing. In the same sense that you might love eating a chocolate ice cream cone but being forced to eat 15 of them at a sitting would not be much fun! What methods the judges are using to rank these performances (after all, fitness is not supposed to be Olympic gymnastics) and what kind of notes they use to keep track of the quality of so many peformances is just another part of the overall mystery of judging fitness.

rationalisation n 1: a defense mechanism by which your true motivation is concealed by explaining your actions and feelings in a way that is not threatening [syn: rationalization] 2: the cognitive process of making something seem consistent with or based on reason

Arnold and winner Susie Curry

Here is another example of the inconsistency of fitness judging. Timea Majorova (not in this contest) does well in fitness despite her bodybuilder-like muscle (I guess it helps to be extraordinarily beautiful). Kelly Ryan (also not in this contest) has been gradually becoming more muscular and not being penalized for it. But Stacy Simons is usually placed fairly low because, in the minds of the judges, she looks "too much like a bodybuilder." Never mind that these are the same judges that gave Kim Chizevsky 6th place in the Fitness Olympia. In Columbus Stacy showed up dieted down so far that far less of the gorgeous curves of her shapley physique were in evidence. By her standards she was lean to the point of being skinny. She didn't look "bad" of course, but in terms of "physique" she had lost a lot of quality. The judges were so impressed with this version of Stacy they gave her 5th place.

Stacy Simons

Ironically, the amateur fitness competitors in the NPC are continuing to develop and display more mass and muscularity - not to the point of looking like competitive bodybuilders but tending to have more muscular physiques than most of the IFBB pros. How would you like to be in fitness and be told, "You're going to need more muscle to make it in the NPC but you'll have to lose it again to compete as a pro."

At least IFBB fitness is not "figure" - a total waste of time, a beauty contest where women in one and two piece suits do endless quarter turns, show no muscle, demonstrate no peformance ability, whose presence tends to deplete the ranks of fitness competitors but who sell a lot of extra tickets for promoters.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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