Tuesday, May 19, 2009

I Am Hans, und I Am Franz, und ...


... ve vant to pump you up!

The link here leads to an article about the Belgian Bodybuilding Championships. 

The short version: When officials showed up for an unexpected drug check, the boys all ran for the door. All of them. Well. Maybe lumbered for the door might be more appropriate ...

Contest had to be cancelled.

They had moved the venue across the border, into the Netherlands because at the previous outing, twenty-two of twenty-nine contestants had either refused the test, or showed positive for steroids. 

Drugs? In bodybuilding? I'm shocked. Shocked!

5 comments:

Wim Demeere said...

My sportsMD is on the team that does these checks. He told me about one of the competitions where they came unannounced and walked up to the organizer, showing their official, government sanctioned papers (it's all regulated here).
Two minutes later they are surrounded by a couple of roid-rage-ready-to-pop bodybuilders giving them the evil eye. The organizer told them he couldn't guarantee their safety so they left... Belgium...

Oh yeah, a Belgian bodybuilder has the first documented case of using of a banned substance only used in horses...

Can you tell I'm getting all patriotic?
:-)

Dan Gambiera said...

Good Lord. Is that thing in the picture human?

Quick! Kil it with fire!

Steve Perry said...

Mr. Photoshop Universe -- though at the extreme edge, it does get hard to tell if it is real or CGI.

There is a self-image illness among hardcore bodybuilders akin to bulimia or anorexia, in which they look in the mirror and no matter how massive they are, they see themselves as too skinny. There are probably guys who, if they could look like the picture, would do so.

For my money, bodybuilding peaked with Steve Reeves, in about 1947. He was built, fit, and healthy. When the crepe-y skinned, balding, yellow sclera, acned and shrunked nads big-stack steroid boys took the stages, it got really freaky.

Now and again, one of them will just up and drop dead. No, thank you ...

Craig B. said...

Reeves, Grimek, Eder- all great. Plus the craziness of how overall FIT they were- though I read a recent interview with Eder where he was bemoaning his inability to do gymnastics like Grimek.

Scott said...

I went to a push/pull meet in the parking lot of a local gym last month. My bench, by Hyde Park Gym standards, is pitiful; but my deadlift was okay; the guys who outpulled me were wrapped* juicers, mostly bigger than me.

The big pull was 650; roid rage has it's uses.


* Lightly wrapped, most of them, just knee wraps and belts.