THE FEMALE PHYSIQUE WEBZINE GALLERY

THE 2005 EMERALD CUP
NPC Female Bodybuilding, Fitness, Figure
Seattle, Washington April 29-30
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By Bill Dobbins


INTRODUCTION

Elaine and Brad Craig have been promoting the Emerald Cup since the early 1980s and over time it has become one of the premier physique competition events in the country.  If you look at a list of top NPC amateur competitors over the past 20 years a significant number of them have come up through the ranks by way of the Emerald Cup.

"Everybody looks forward to the Emerald Cup every year, "says competitor/model and native of the Seattle area Brenda Kelly, "in part because of how supportive and hospitable Elaine and Brad have always been."

The 2005 Emerald Cup was no exception to this tradition.  In spite of the intermittent rain (rain in Seattle: why do you think this is where Starbucks was invented?) the turnout for both prejudging and the finals was considerable and the Expo more extensive and successful than many national-level events.

THE NPC EVENTS

The women's bodybuilding competition had some excellent competitors but not a great many of them.  The problem with bodybuilding for women in the NPC is simply that there are too few of them and the good ones ascend to the national level so quickly that the line ups of any contests up to the USA and the Nationals. 

There were only 16 total FBBs in the contest and only two in the heavyweight class.   There were more female bodybuilders at this show in the past and just a few weeks later there were not many pro women in bodybuilding at the New York show.

As I have written many times before, the lack of support for FBBs by the federations and the physique publications have a lot to do with this.  But so does the overall lack of respect for bodybuilding that is prevalent for bodybuilding by the culture as a whole – a far cry from how relatively well-regarded the sport was in the 1980s and early 1990s.

The IFBB and NPC both need full time, professional public relations in order to publicize and promote the sport.  They would benefit and so would the individual competitors and the physique magazines.  Even with AMI now owning Weider this kind of promotion and publicity has not been forthcoming.

There was no shortage of fitness and figure competitors, as usual in NPC contests.  But amateur fitness may be facing some hard times in the future.  Fitness has been replaced by figure in the USA this year.  This is in the wake of fitness competitors jumping ship in favor of figure in mass numbers because the fitness routines are so heavily scored on the basis of gymnastics and the women have the erroneous idea that figure is just fitness without the need for a routine.  In reality the judges have increasingly been chosing figure winners on the basis of a very different standard – that of the  long-waisted, tall-proportioned fitness model.  So many competitors leaving fitness might do better to consider lightweight bodybuilding rather than figure.

Another reason promoters like figure rather than fitness, aside from having more competitors entering their shows (all of them paying entry fees) is that not having to leave time for fitness routines can considerably shorten very long shows.  Of course, there is also the fact that the potential liability from serious fitness injuries could be astronomical – although the NPC seems to rarely discuss this publicly.

In fact, one of the very few problems at the Emerald Cup this year was how hard and unforgiving the stage was on fitness routines.  Two of the pro competitors (see the pro report) in a row had to leave the stage with injuries.  In future there ought to be some kind of carpeting or mat used to make injuries less likely.
Anna Larsson and Amanda Savell

Watching the fitness routines over time it's easy to begin to take the level of ability and expertise the women demonstrate for granted.  Sure, what you are seeing is not Olympic-level gymnastics,  but if a group of them got together and created a Vegas show act people would line-up to pay to see them.  What makes their performance more impressive is that these are not the under-developed teenage girl-children that most often become the top international gymnastics competitors.  They are older, with much more mature bodies, bodies that also carry a lot more muscle.  Flinging yourself around on stage with this kind of body composition is much more difficult than doing it as a 95 pound 13 year old.

All the more reason why ALL fitness routines should be done on some kind of gymnastics mat to protect against injury.

The figure competition, as usual, had plenty of great-looking women entered – and one particularly interesting story.  The winner was Anna Larsson of Sweden (whom I just just photographed in the studio a week earlier.  Anna was thrilled to win but frustrated because, not being a US citizen, she would not be eligible for NPC competition on the national level.  But soon after the event she was informed that, due to her success in national competition in Sweden, her home federation had made her eligible for a pro card.  So Anna's next contest will be the IFBB California Pro Figure in Los Angeles.

Incidentally, while I always find fitness very difficult to judge as an observer, figure is usually much easier – at least on the pro level.  Look for somebody with tall, long proportions like Davana Medina or Jenny Lynn and you'll usually be pretty close to right.  At the Emerald Cup, as beautiful as Anna Larsson is (and she certainly is that) in a pro contest she might well have lost the overall to Amanda Savell rather than winning.  Amanda has exactly the sort of long torso, tiny waist, tall proportioned look that we see in Davana, Jenny Lynn and Amber Littlejohn.

But both Anna and Amanda looked so good and were in such good shape that the audience got its money's worth no matter who turned out the overall winner.


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