Article written for The Telegraph
All pumped up and fit to burst
On Sunday, the international pro bodybuilding circus came to London for the annual British Grand Prix. Jon Hotten went along for a closer look at the world's weirdest sport – and to meet the champion they call 'Big Ron'
Big Ron is rock hard and ready for action. He is covered in a sheen of baby oil and wearing nothing but a small pair of red, spangly trunks.
The author with Big Ron: 'there is something otherworldly about Coleman, something indefinably larger than life'
His face slowly breaks into a relaxed, confident smile. He loves these moments. Soon, he will take to the stage and allow the world once more to catch an eyeful of his awesome physique. No one who sees him is likely to forget the experience.
Of the six billion or so bodies on the planet, this man can claim, with some justification, to possess the biggest and best, to be the king of the jungle - and here he is, in rainy Wembley, just off the A406. Ronnie Coleman probably packs more muscle on to his frame than any man before him. He is 40 years old and stands 5ft 10in tall, yet he weighs around 300lb (21st 6lb) with a body fat index of around four per cent (a professional footballer has around 10 per cent).
His upper arm, flexed, measures 25in; the circumference of one of his thighs, at almost 36in, is greater than his waist. The bits of his body that he cannot grow - his head, his hands, his feet - perch at the extremities of his bulk like the tips of a balloon that hasn't quite fully inflated.
But the measurements are mere facts. The real empirical evidence of Big Ron's jaw-dropping freakiness comes up close. All of the world's best bodybuilders are big. Some have body parts that, taken individually, are more than a match for Coleman's - Markus Ruhl, for example, has shoulders that look like a cow's haunches; Chris Cormier has sleeker lines - but no one presents a better all-round package (and it has nothing to do with the posing trunks).
There is something otherworldly about Coleman, something indefinably larger than life. He has a powerful aura, as well as a physical density that comes from 27 years of heavy training. Once, in Holland, I stood in a hotel lift with Cormier, another top American named Dexter Jackson, and Big Ron.
A notice inside the lift said it was made to carry eight people, but we could barely all fit inside. Chris and Dexter were big men, but Ronnie... he was something else. He zinged with power and glowed like granite. Standing next to him was like standing next to a wall. Such daunting presence is what sets him apart, and what has put him at the peak of his sport - a seven-time Mr Olympia (pro bodybuilding's greatest prize, which he retained last month) and winner of a record 24 professional titles (more even than Arnold Schwarzenegger).
Big Ron rules the world. We may never see his like again, and the 2,000 people who have crowded into the Wembley Conference Centre know it.
Much of London's muscle is here, too. The doormen look a little unsettled, and with good reason: many of those in the crowd are more beefy than they are. They are here for the CNP British Grand Prix, the biggest event in the British bodybuilding calendar. It may be just one more stop on the European tour for Big Ron and his rivals, but, for the audience, it is their only chance this year to see the stars of the sport under the same roof.
Bodybuilding is not only the wildest, weirdest sport in the world, at the top level, it is also one of the toughest. It demands genetic suitability and monomaniacal focus. Competitors must train intensively over several years - in some cases, decades. They must consume around 8,000 calories a day over the course of six to 10 meals to maintain their bulk. What's more - and it is pointless pretending otherwise - they must be willing to pump their bodies with anabolic steroids and, often, growth hormones and diuretics.
It's a high-maintenance sport and the costs - financial, physical and psychological - can be high. One former Mr Olympia compared taking anabolic steroids to smoking: some people are still lighting up quite happily at 90, while others lose a lung at 35. Elite bodybuilders suffer less long-term damage than the gym rats who buy into the great steroid myth - that they can turn anyone into Mr Olympia - but still they have fallen.
Andreas Munzer died in 1996, 12 days after finishing sixth in Schwarzenegger's tournament, the Arnold Classic. His liver had melted and his heart had failed. Mohamed Benaziza perished in 1992, suffering a heart attack on the European tour after abusing the diuretics Lasix and Aldactone. Paul Dillett froze on stage at the Arnold in 1994 - not through nerves, but because he was too dehydrated to move an inch. Three officials carried him off like a cardboard cut-out, still in his pose.
Steve Michalik, the most notorious bodybuilder of all time, ended up, in his words, with testicles "the size of cocktail peanuts" and vital organs vying "to explode on me". On Saturday, a competitor was rushed to hospital after collapsing at the Amsterdam Grand Prix, with dehydration and high potassium levels. But these are extreme cases - most bodybuilders know more about their bodies than GPs.
Like marathon runners, they know they can compete only a few times a year. And, like boxing in the good old days, there can be only one world champion - Mr Olympia. But few people can make a successful living from the sport. Only around 100 people hold an International Federation of Bodybuilders (IFBB) professional card and perhaps just 10 of those can expect to earn big bucks to match their big frames.
There is no collective noun for a group of competing bodybuilders, but if there were, it might be a "parking lot" - with their shiny metallic tans, bodywork polished to perfection, and souped-up engines. At the conference centre, they are jammed together, bumper to bumper, in the pump-up room, immediately behind the stage, which is reached via a confusing series of dark stairs and bright corridors. Big Ron swaggers in - slowly, regally - with a pair of headphones clamped to his ears.
Markus Ruhl: one of the few competitors who can hope to match up to Big Ron
Coleman knows all about cars - he has won plenty of them. Part of the prize for Mr Olympia each year is a brand new Cadillac Esplanade. He has seven of those, as well as a Hummer, for winning the Arnold Classic in 2001. I once asked him what he did with them all.
"I dunno, man," he said, laughing. "I keep 'em... I give 'em away." In addition to the cars and the prize money (a Mr Olympia win is worth $110,000, a Grand Prix show $30,000), he has a contract with the Weider fitness company, worth around $200,000 a year, to pose and speak exclusively to its magazines, and to appear at its shows.
Then there are the protein supplement endorsements, and the $10 he charges for a signed photograph when he appears at the big expos. The queues to buy those often stretch for 100 yards or so, and he'll sign for hours on end.
"The money don't hurt none," he told me. His life now is a far cry from his younger days in Texas, where he was raised alone by his mother, and where he used to work as a policeman, earning $46,000 a year.
advertisementBig Ron has no trouble parking himself backstage at Wembley. He picks out a spot right at the back of the room, and strips. His girlfriend, Alti Bautista, applies baby oil to his immense frame. It's a bit like watching someone painting a house and seems to take almost as long.
The other bodybuilders stay out of Big Ron's face. In the pump-up room, the hierarchy is clear to see. When the Californian Chris Cormier, a long-term rival of Coleman, wants to check himself in a long mirror, he flicks a hand at a couple of smaller men and they move aside. When the gigantic German Markus Ruhl sets down his bag, space suddenly appears all around him.
It is a subjective sport, but most contestants know roughly where they will be placed before an event. Yet, decisions don't always match expectations - judging is bodybuilding's most controversial side. Competitors have been known to yell, fight and flounce out of arenas when verdicts go against them. The main problem is that no one knows clearly what the judges are looking for, despite the many pages of rules in the IFBB's constitution (which covers not only the permissible styles of posing trunks worn by the competitors, but the colour of socks worn by the judges).
Wayne DeMilia, a former head judge with the IFBB, says: "Every contest is a different story. It depends on who's there and what condition they're in. Every judge has their opinion. You don't want all judges to judge the same."
The history of bodybuilding is littered with controversial decisions. The most famous was Arnold Schwarzenegger's seventh Mr Olympia win, which came in 1980, after the future Governor of California had been retired from the sport for five years.
The tools of the trade
He told his opponents he was travelling to the show to commentate for a television channel and only entered the event at two hours' notice. He duly won, and the crowd booed long and hard. "I did it to see them freak out and have diarrhoea," Schwarzenegger said of his opponents, in the days before he mastered the art of political oratory, "and for them to have a career they planned for themselves go down the tubes in two seconds."
There is not much love lost between the competitors. There is too much at stake, the prize money is too thinly spread, and those taking part are too self-obsessed. There is no room for mutual admiration, only bitchiness.
Once a Mr Olympia is crowned, he often remains dominant in the sport for some years. Since 1965, the title has been contested 39 times and held by just 10 men. Big Ron has won seven times, but it wasn't until the 2003 show, when he weighed 20lb more than he ever had before, that the Coleman era really began.
Now, he says, he never wants it to end. "It's a great joy in my life and I thank God for it," he says. "It's something I really, really enjoy and I can't put it into words. I never thought I'd be Mr Olympia in a million years, and I didn't know I had what it takes. But I'm glad I do. People ask me how long I'll go on, because I'm forty-whatever, but God will decide."
God didn't need to decide who was going to win the British Grand Prix on Sunday night, though. Big Ron, and everyone else, already knew it would be him. On stage, his extra size is obvious even to the untrained eye. He poses slowly, and with great power, to the accompaniment of Carmina Burana. The crowd whoops it up as Big Ron joshes with his fellow competitors.
The only controversial decision of the night comes when Ruhl is edged into fourth place by Kris Dim, a new American pro who is about half Ruhl's size, but sleeker and sharper. Cormier finishes second.
advertisementAfterwards, in the dressing rooms, Coleman places the knee-high trophy inside his black holdall and gets dressed. A pair of blue, XXL parachute pants can't quite hide the magisterial sweep of quad. A sleeveless lumberjack shirt as big as a picnic blanket leaves his great arms free for his admirers to gawp at.
Outside, the queues of fans are lining the conference centre stairs to catch another glimpse of their hero and ask for his autograph. He'll sign his name a few hundred times and then, tomorrow, he'll fly home, first-class, to Texas - a little bit richer and still the biggest man in the world.
Please Scroll Down to See Forums Below 
