The sport of bodybuilding has finally spotted the iceberg on the horizon and is showing signs that it's going to steer its Titanic self clear of that path. The 2004 Mr. Olympia will make significant changes in how judging standards are applied and how the show unfolds (see "Revolution," the special Mr. O article in the September issue). The NPC USA, held July 16-17 in Las Vegas, gave a preview of this, indicating that the amateur wing of the sport is onboard with a new course for bodybuilding.

The steps in the right direction include judging that rewards muscularly balanced physiques with great conditioning rather than outright mass and a reduction in the occurrences of competitor bodyparts unnecessarily swollen from foreign substances. So far, we like what we're seeing. With overall winners such as light-heavyweight Mark Dugdale, this sport may head toward the mainstream, after all.

In fact, it was hard to complain about the class winners--you couldn't ask for a more deserving group of guys. Mark Dugdale (light-heavyweight winner) and Chris Cook (super-heavyweight winner) were the focus of most of the precompetition buzz. But "Big" Will Harris' overall victory at the Los Angeles Championships one week before--where he presented his best-ever conditioning--had people talking about him, too. Ultimately, only two pro cards are handed out to male bodybuilders at the USA, and Chris Cook (as was the case last year) found himself sitting on the sidelines of the big leagues, at least until the next competition.

Did the judges get it right? Yes--as much as they could. In the audience, the consensus was that Dugdale deserved the overall. It's always satisfying to see the best bodybuilder onstage win the overall, even if he isn't the biggest. With light-heavyweight and overall winner Richard Jones last year and Dugdale this year, the judges are sending a message to bigger bodybuilders: You'd better be complete and in condition if you want to earn a pro card.

The second pro card was awarded to Will Harris, and deservedly so. However, the audience was all over the map about who should have been given the call. Although many supported Harris, others felt that it should have gone to heavyweight second-place finisher Marcus Haley or third-place Faramarz Aghazadeh. Still others thought Cook deserved it for his improvements and tenacity. So the judges couldn't win, really. They chose Harris over Cook, based on his better conditioning and back detail. For now, Cook will have to live with that, but it should give him focus as he prepares for his next pro qualifier. No one doubts he'll one day be a top-tier pro.

--Steve Stiefel

SUPER HEAVYWEIGHT

COOKING SHOW REPEAT | It was deja vu when Chris Cook won the super-heavyweight class but minutes later failed to nab one of the two pro cards--the same plot twist as last year. First, the good: Cook defeated 20 super heavies, including perpetually improving 264-pound Omar Deckard and surprising 40-year-old Rusty Jeffers, who vaulted from also-ran to top contender. Jeffers first competed 27 years ago--the year Cook was born!

"Obviously, I'm appreciative of any kind of win," Cook said of his class victory. "It's a huge feat to be the best super in America two years in a row, but it only takes a little bit of bad to overshadow the good sometimes."

Cook refuses to dwell on the bad. Moments after the repeat defeat that followed the repeat victory, he was already looking ahead to the fulfillment of his boundless potential. "I'm in this for the long haul. This is my job, and I take it very seriously. I obviously have some more learning and some more growing to do. I'll be back, and I'll be back better, just like I was this year. I'm happy with my improvements, but I still feel like I'm just getting started."

--Greg Merritt

HEAVYWEIGHT

BIG WILL TO WIN | It takes a lot of will to win a pro card, and Big Will Harris at age 36 presented a lot of Will at this year's USA. The heavyweight class was clearly the most tightly contested and deepest of the evening with second-place Marcus Haley and third-place Faramarz Aghazadeh also receiving first-place ballots from the judges. In fact, unlike in the other classes, the judges called these top three back at the end of the judging round to get a closer look.

When all was said and done, though, Harris felt he was the logical choice. "Recently, I had an epiphany," he said backstage. "I know my genetics are good enough to compete on the Olympia stage, so I put together a plan to become a pro. I had no doubt I would win my pro card tonight." Harris was knocked by some for having smaller legs than the other top competitors, but he carries plenty of upper-body mass on a physique that grows more aesthetic the more you look at it. "My plan is to win with my aesthetics. I'm not trying to out-creature anybody," he said.

One week before, he had won the overall title at the Los Angeles Championships as a super heavyweight. Harris said he didn't care whether he competed as a super heavyweight or a heavyweight at the USA. "I never looked at the scales," Harris said. "You see how deep the heavyweight class is and you see how weak the super heavyweights are and it makes me think they only need the one class for the big guys." Harris also points out that since the establishment of the super heavies, very few of these class winners have gone on to great success in the pros. Winning his pro card out of the more competitive heavies may bode well for Big Will.

--Steve Stiefel

LIGHT HEAVYWEIGHT

ON THE MARK | To virtually everyone in attendance at Friday's prejudging and Saturday's finals, the USA men's division overall title was decided the second Mark Dugdale strode onstage. It was that convincing and that dominating a display by the light heavyweight.

Was he perfect? No. No one is. But he was damned close. His muscles were full and round and flowed from one to another the way liquid fingers flowed down into the Mojave from the craggy mountainsides after Saturday's flash storms. His conditioning was ideal--cross striations were visible in his upper quads (a la Tom Platz), yet his toned bronzed skin shone like the Las Vegas Strip at night. After each transition of his free-pose routine, his body seemed to snap into place, as if the poses had been waiting since their creation for his form to fill them.

The crowd reacted with a flurry of screams and hoots each time Dugdale took the stage. Attending pros nodded their approval. Judges awarded him straight firsts. One imagines they would have scored him even higher if it were possible.

Of course, Dugdale wasn't the only light heavyweight to take the USA stage this weekend. In fact, Floridians Randolph Chaney II and Nathan Wonsley each made a strong case for top-honors consideration by coming to Vegas primed for battle. Divided by a single point on the prejudging score sheet, they proved themselves to be separate but equally excellent.

On any other weekend, Chaney, with his classic lines and canopy of a back, and Wonsley, with his thick arms and flaring delts, would have been duking it out for the class victory and pro card consideration. On this particular weekend, a bodybuilding juggernaut named Dugdale would not be denied.

Rounding out the top five were desert-dry Joe Ament in fourth place and Hoover Dam-wide Curtis Bryant in fifth.

--Shawn Perine

MIDDLEWEIGHT

THE MERITS OF GARRETT | Garrett Allin wasn't the thickest middleweight. That was Eryk Bui, 20 pounds heftier than when he won the USA lightweight class two years ago. Allin also didn't possess the most aesthetically pleasing middleweight physique, for that belonged to Jorge Betancourt, the 1990 Teen Nationals champ with artistic lines only a Dadaist could fault. Instead, 5'4" Allin won the class, justifiably, with the leanest and most complete body.

The 39-year-old Allin triumphed in the city he calls home. "You have quite the dichotomy," he says of Las Vegas. "On the one hand, the economy runs on T&A and booze and gambling, and yet we probably have more gyms and health-food stores per capita than any other city in the country." He manages one of those stores, J&J Health Foods, and he is trained by IFBB pro Frank Hillebrand. Allin, who has been competing for only three years, won his initial outing, the 2001 Nevada State Championships. "My goal all along was just to do a show where I put it all together, and I think this one was the one. This is the culmination. However, there's always the Nationals and a pro card if I could win the middleweights there, so that's a temptation," Allin says with a grin. "It's hard to stop." Visitors to his adopted hometown know the feeling.

--Greg Merritt

LIGHTWEIGHT

GAXIOLA LANDS THE VICTORY | With only eight lightweight competitors and six bantams, it begs the question: Does the NPC really need two classes for male bodybuilders who weigh less than 155 pounds?

The lightweight class was a mixed bag of strengths and weaknesses, with no dominant competitor. Ralph Gaxiola, who works as a computer programmer for a company that manufactures landing gear for airplanes, was able to land this win. He wasn't the best conditioned, or the most muscular in the class, but he won because he had the best balance of these strengths.

William Slater had the thickest upper body, but his conditioning and lower-body size relegated him to fifth. Allan Terrell, fourth, has the best structure and shape, but he was nowhere near the conditioning he's displayed at previous USA competitions. Howard Steffensmeier, third, was the best conditioned of the group, but with his structure, he needs to hold more fullness in his muscles to contend for the class title. Brant Arelliano was the crowd favorite, but he looks a little lanky onstage--a serious bodybuilding detriment. To overcome this structural issue, he needs to move up a class and fill out his physique.

Taking advantage of these vulnerabilities, Gaxiola was victorious. At 41, he had been retired not only from bodybuilding, but weight training in general for many years due to health reasons. With a clean bill of health, he was able to get back to the gym and achieve his best-ever look.

--Steve Stiefel

BANTAMWEIGHT

BURKE JOCKEYS FOR POSITION | Consider the plight of a bantamweight bodybuilder: Despite having inherited a structural gene set suited for a jockey, he decides to pursue bodybuilding, the language of which is rife with such hyperbolic adjectives as "huge" and "massive."

Yet six such individuals stood upon the Artemus W. Ham Concert Hall stage in proud defiance of their hereditary lot and presented physiques that, if not describable as "enormous," could rightly be labeled "impressive."

Of the six, Steven Burke was deemed most impressive by the USA judges and with good reason. He displayed a winning combination of size, shape, definition and poise. Coming in at 5'2 1/2" and 139 pounds, Burke found his third national-level appearance to be the charm. At 46, he served as an inspiring role model for every other USA athlete.

Coming in second was a lean and muscular Jose Vargas who, with some refinement of his posing skills, can make the move into the winner's spot. Third-place finisher George Gibson, despite a debilitating leg injury, proved yet again that in bodybuilding the limitations of the body are no match for the powers of the focused mind. In taking fourth, John Ligsay Jr. elevated Saturday's proceedings with his balletic posing performance, as did fellow Hawaiian Richie Langit, the fifth-place finisher.

--Shawn Perine

RELATED ARTICLE: SUPER-HEAVYWEIGHT CLASS TOP 15

1 Chris Cook 2 Rusty Jeffers 3 Omar Deckard 4 Rodney Davis 5 Abbas Khatami 6 David Palumbo 7 Chris Bennett 8 Rudy Richards 9 Jason Bard 10 Kike Gutierrez 11 Milton James 12 Jason Dayberry 13 Wondell LeFlore 14 Brian Davis 15 Joseph Patterson

RELATED ARTICLE: HEAVYWEIGHT CLASS TOP 15

1 Will Harris 2 Marcus Haley 3 Faramarz Aghazadeh 4 Grigori Atoyan 5 Michael Ergas 6 Capriese Murray 7 Charles Ray Arde 8 Lionel Brown 9 Jonathan Rowe 10 Sonny Thomason 11 Damon Island 12 Gus Carter 13 Rick Soslas 14 Quentin Pullen 15 Darrell Terrell

RELATED ARTICLE: LIGHT-HEAVYWEIGHT CLASS TOP 15

1 Mark Dugdale (and overall) 2 Randolph Chaney II 3 Nathan Wonsley 4 Joe Ament 5 Curtis Bryant 6 Dale Hicks 7 Tito Raymond 8 Mark Christensen 9 T.J. Schoenborn 10 Tad Inoue 11 Edgar Cabrera 12 Michael Broadway 13 Patrick Franks 14 Sam Urbach 15 William Zamot

RELATED ARTICLE: MIDDLEWEIGHT CLASS TOP 15

1 Garrett Allin 2 Eryk Bui 3 Saman Bakhtiar 4 Jorge Betancourt 5 Hector Cruz 6 James Allen 7 Tom Jimenez 8 Jerry Serna 9 Richard Kreider 10 Peter Hennessy 11 Leon Harrison Jr. 12 Kaleo Timas 13 Chris Cianciulli 14 Sheldon Staggers 15 Brian Dawson

RELATED ARTICLE: LIGHTWEIGHT CLASS TOP 8

1 Ralph Gaxiola 2 Brant Arelliano 3 Howard Steffensmeier 4 Allan Terrell 5 William J. Slater 6 Narciso Racoma Jr. 7 Ron Marshall 8 Ramon Velasquez Jr.

RELATED ARTICLE: BANTAMWEIGHT CLASS TOP 6

1 Steven Burke 2 Jose Vargas 3 George Gibson 4 John Ligsay Jr. 5 Richie Langit 6 Mike Palanca

BY TEAM FLEX

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