FITNESS VS. FIGURE AT THE ARNOLD
CONTEST REPORT
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By Bill Dobbins
INTRODUCTIONBoyco called his competitions "Ms. Fitness" contests - and in fact copyrighted the name.
Soon after television producer Lou Zwick decided to create his own fitness events. His Fitness America contests were broadcast on cable TV - ESPN - rather than syndicated station by station. There is less money in cable but Zwick made up for this in some part by allowing huge numbers of competitors to sign up for the contests, which brought in both 100 or more registration fees and a lot of friends and family to buy tickets to see the show.
The success of these two series did not go unnoticed by the National Physique Committee, the national sanctioning body for amateur bodybuilding in the United States. The NPC is essentially an organization of promoters, and what promoters need is bodies on stage and bodies in the seats. So in 1995 the NPC began sanctioning it's own fitness events as did the pro division of the IFBB. (Amateur fitness in the IFBB didn't begin until a year later.)
Fitness has been flourishing for a number of years, but recently there have been problems. Following the lead of Boyco and Zwick, the NPC also included a performance round as part of its fitness competitions. And, just as with Ms. Fitness and Fitness America events, they found that the gymnasts - benefiting from years or even a lifetime of training - tended to dominate the performance round. Fitness became, in effect, a gymnastics contest where some points could be earned based on your physique - provided you didn't look too much like a bodybuilder.
Unlike the competitors in Ms. Fitness and Fitness America events, the women who compete in the NPC and later qualify for the IFBB pro events are interested in creating careers, not just entering a few shows. But a lot of these ambitous competitors, who might betrained dancers, martial artists, or possessed a variety of high-level athletic abilities, were upset by having little chance when competing against serious gymnasts. It didn't matter if you looked like Monica Brant or Timea Majorova, had a fantastic athletic body, a movie-star face or a legion of devoted fans. If you weren't a gymnast, your success would be limited or short-lived.
As an answer to these complaints the NPC decided to create a new competition division: Figure. On paper, figure was supposed to be fitness without the performance. Figure was designed to give fitness women who weren't gymnasts or didn't have some other extraordinary performance ability an area in which to compete. However, in actuality competitors began deserting the ranks of fitness to compete in figure in droves. Eventually, at a local contest, you might see five women in the fitness division and 55 in figure.
Plus, the figure competitors found that the judges were not really looking for the same kind of body they rewarded in fitness contests. Instead, they were giving high placings to women with taller, longer proportions and not much muscularity at all. In short, figure quickly became a beauty contest for fitness models and has continued to gradually deplete the ranks of fitness competition - at least on a local level.
Just as the IFBB followed the lead of the NPC in sanctioning fitness contests, this year in Columbus they decided to include figure - in addition to bodybuilding and fitness. All three types of competition were held together on a Friday - with prejudging held in the Expo hall in the afternoon and the finals on the stage of the Veteran's Auditorium that night.
MS. INTERNATIONAL FITNESS
The Ms. International Fitness Competition turned out not to be much of
a surprise. However extensive the defections from the fitness ranks
are at the local amateur level, there was little sign of it in Columbus. Of
course, there wasn't much new blood in the pro fitness ranks at all. The
top six finishers were as a group "old hands" at pro fitness. It
surprised nobody when Susie Curry won, Adela Friedmansky placed second
and Kelly Ryan was third. But it wouldn't have been too much of a
surprise if that finishing order had been changed or even reversed.
Of course, when it comes to bodybuilding you generally have a fairly predictable outcome. But in bodybuilding, you can actually see why one competitor deserves to beat another and it is also clear that even the favorite can lose if she is not in top shape. (Example being Dayana Cadeau, finishing fourth in lightweight bodybuilding, with a physique that should probably have won easily if she'd been really hard and defined).
But looking at the fitness lineup - and I've written this many times before - it is not obvious who should win by looking at the physiques on stage. Sure, Susie Curry and Adela win a lot of contests, so you come to expect they might win another. But why they win is not that obvious. There is nothing wrong with them, they are fit, attractive and athletic women, but so are the others on stage. It seems probable that the judges are simply going by past experience. Certain women have won before, so they must be the standard by which everyone should be judged.
However, there is the matter of the performance to consider. Susie, Adela and Kelly are all terrific performers. Susie, in particular, does the fastest routine I've ever seen - even compared to Bela Karolyi trained Kelly Ryan. If you don't believe this, try taking pictures of her during her routine. So if you are giving a lot of weight to the performance round in the judging it is no wonder that Susie Curry has such an advantage. Susie is another performer an audience in someplace like Las Vegas would pay to see perform.
For those of us who are physique fans, there is one consolation. But Susie and Adela have been slowly developing more muscle over the years - and Kelly Ryan already looks like a lightweight bodybuilder - so in spite of the fact that the federations would prefer fitness competitors without "too much" muscle, nature is taking its course. When an athlete trains with weight consistently over time, she is going to build bigger and more defined muscles. That's a basic principle of bodybuilding weight-training that applies to everyone, in spite of what rules the federations put in place to prevent it.
MS. INTERNATIONAL FIGURE
As soon as it was announced that Monica Brant would be competing in the
new figure division in Columbus, a lot of people figured she was a lock
to win. After all, this was Monica Brant, former Fitness Olympia winner,
the best known woman in fitness, who only stopped competing because she
lack the requisite gymnastics skills.
I predicted this wouldn't happen. Not because Monica is not a beautiful woman with a fantastic physique, but because my experience of figure told me (as I stated above) the judges were not going to be looking for a competitive fitness physique but for someone with the body of a fitness model.
This turned out to be exactly the case.
I remember noticing Jenny Lynn in NPC fitness competition last year. She has tall, sleek proportions, long legs, a tiny waist and a beautiful face. She has enough muscle so you can tell she works out but is not as muscular as most of the good fitness competitors. With such a complete package, it was obvious from the moment the competitors took the stage in Columbus that Jenny was probably going to win.
In fact, I found figure extremely easy to judge and my scoring agreed with the judges almost right down the line. If you just look at figure as a specialized beauty contest, judging the event is no problem. Davana Medina - totally gorgeous and easily a potential pro figure champion in the future - was obviously a little bit off, not as lean or polished as Jenny and placed third. Mari Kudla was the anomaly in this lineup. She wasn't nearly as defined and athletic looking and as the others in the top six, but she has tremendous stage presence and was one of the sexiest competitors in the figure event. So it was fairly predictable that the judges would place her well. Kristy Robbins and Elaine Goodlad, fifth and sixth, were also my picks to make the top six - not quite up the standards of a Jenny or Monica, but excellent nonetheless.
About Monica Brant. In my estimation, Monica looked as good or better as I've ever seen her. No wonder she is a star! To my eye, she looked like a slimmed-down bodybuilder, but she always has and that's something I particularly like about her. But she doesn't have the tiny waist that Jenny does and her overall proportions are less model-like. She reminds me how great it would be if a number of fitness women like Monica, Timea Majorova, and Stacy Simmons had decided to become bodybuilders. What a lightweight lineup that would make! (Lena Johannesen, who was one of the most beautiful women in bodybuilding, moved from fitness and now to figure and lost most of the shape and quality of her body in the process.)
Monica placed a solid second and could win figure in the future. But I don't think she is the future of figure. Figure is likely to remain a contest among model-types rather than those with more athletic and muscular physiques.
Meanwhile, now that figure exists to draw fitness competitors away and that the prize money and the time on stage has to be split three ways instead of two - and with the problem of the defections from fitness on the amateur level - it remains to be seen whether figure will gradually take over from fitness on the pro level as it seems to be doing among the amateurs. However disciplined the figure women are about training and diet, the is no doubt the preparation involved for competition is less arduous than it is for fitness. And the easier the effort involved, the more competitors you are likely to see - including a lot of refugees from bodybuilding and fitness who really have no business in a figure competition.
As a photographer, I can make one definite observation: It sure gets boring shooting endless pictures of quarter turns in fitness and figure competitions. Whether the audience will come to share this boredom over time is anybody's guess.
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