The Real Mr. O - JAY CUTLER GOT ROBBED- BY A POLICEMAN
Saw it in the mag, but found it online.... I was just like wtf when i read it, but every1 has their own opnion i guess
go here to read the article http://www.musculardevelopment.com/new/mro.html
or...
The Real Mr. O
JAY CUTLER
GOT ROBBED-
BY A POLICEMAN
By John Romano
February 2002 Issue of MD
The first question asked during the IFBB press conference at the start of the 2001 Olympia weekend was if the judging is fixed. The question seemed extraneous at the time, perhaps even a little silly, but, at the final outcome of the show, those in the audience who weren't yelling "Boooo!" were rubbing their chins saying, "Hmmm…" Jay Cutler went into the finals six points ahead of Ronnie Coleman, having beaten him in the symmetry and muscularity rounds during prejudging earlier in the day. Going into the night show, it sure looked like Jay was about to commit regicide. But, when the dust settled, the king survived the attempt and beat Jay by four points.
An Olympian Screwing?
Anyone who has been around the iron game awhile knows the contest is pretty much decided during the prejudging. The posing routines and subsequent pose-down is more for the audience's amusement than anything else. Typically, even the best posing routine or the most aggressive pose-down does little to affect the scoring. In fact, as many of you know, the scores are all handed in to the head judge to be tallied before the pose-down, so the pose-down couldn't possibly affect the scores. The athletes are posing down while the scores are being tallied. So, we are supposed to believe Ronnie Coleman found 10 points merely with his posing routine? How could that be?
According to several veteran bodybuilding observers I spoke with after the show, the unanimous opinion was that Jay got screwed. He absolutely smoked Coleman; he beat him dead to rights during the prejudging in both symmetry and muscularity, and although the points don't reflect it, the pictures here do- Jay beat Ronnie in the comparisons, too. So, how can he come back for the night show and lose?
Okay, so his posing routine wasn't the best, and yeah, maybe his oil should have been better applied, but that didn't take away from the fact that Jay was tighter and bigger and better balanced than the reigning champ. So, why didn't Jay win? Some told me that they felt it was because Ronnie did have a better posing routine and during the pose-down, instead of going head to head with Jay, Ronnie ran out into the crowd and started hitting shots in the audience, really riling up the crowd. He stayed away from Jay instead of showing us who was really the best. Fine, but what the audience thinks doesn't matter.
It was also opined that Jay got relegated to second place because he didn't re-sign his Weider contract and instead signed an endorsement deal with ISS. That would be impossible to prove, but the fact still remains that not since Lee Haney won his eighth Mr. O after having signed with Twinlab, has a non-Weider athlete won the Mr. O. Could the reigning king be toppled by an athlete not representing the Weider empire? Is it possible that Jay was being punished for turning his back on the godfather of modern bodybuilding? Whatever the reason, just check out these comparisons to the left and see for yourself.
Accusations of contest fixing are rampant in bodybuilding. However, in reality, the prospect is really slim based on the following defense. I'm not saying that I'm agreeing with it, but it doesn't matter what I think. There are 53 pro judges in the IFBB, 22 of them were at the Olympia weekend and one of them was competing- Juliet Bergman, who actually won the Ms. Olympia. (That's probably a whole other story, but I'm not going to go there). In each contest during the Olympia weekend, there were 12 judges. In each judging round, one of the judges' scores is not counted randomly. Of the 11 remaining judges, six of their scores are excluded- the three highest and three lowest- leaving just five judges' scores to be counted. This is supposedly what makes it hard to fix a contest; not impossible, just difficult.
Are the judges accountable for the scoring? No one ever gets to see a judge's scorecard, not even the competitors. This information is made public in the NPC, but not in the IFBB. IFBB president Wayne DeMilia, when asked about this very fact during the press conference, replied that a long time ago this information was made public, but some of the athletes got so pissed at their scores that they actually attacked some judges physically. This year DeMilia said any athlete could come to his room after the show to check out the individual scores.
The Ray Remedy
If anyone would have had an opinion about that it was Shawn Ray, and far be it from Shawn to keep his opinion to himself. A 13-year veteran of the Mr. Olympia, and certainly privy to numerous inequities in judging, Shawn spelled out what he thought would be a viable remedy to the possible fiascoes that arise out of poor judging. First, Shawn wants to see all 21 competitors go away with at least some prize money. Bodybuilding is one of a handful of professional sports in the world in which an athlete can compete, spending his own money to do so, and walk away empty handed. I'd like that to change, too. It's not like there isn't any money floating around in the IFBB. Next, Shawn thinks that there should be a fresh judging panel convened each year. If you judged the Mr. Olympia last year, then next year you go on hiatus. With 53 IFBB judges, that shouldn't be a problem. Finally, in order to insure the accountability of the judges, the scoring of the athletes should be made public. I think this would go a long way in keeping accusations of contest fixing to a minimum.
You can't please everyone, but the athletes work their asses off and make huge sacrifices to compete in such a show and it would only be fair for the athletes if they knew they weren't doing it for nothing and that the judges were truly doing their job. I mean what's the big secret? Are the judges really such pussies that they're afraid some bodybuilder is going to sock them in the eye for judging them poorly? Come on, the litigious society in which we live would surely preclude any such behavior. In the end, DeMilia finally agreed that the judges' scorecards will be included with the final results, so everyone could see that the contest was fairly judged.
He's Great, But...
Unfortunately, all this didn't man a hill of beans this year because as you can clearly see from the pictures, Cutler still got fucked. As far as I'm concerned, Jay Cutler is the real 2001 Mr. Olympia. Ronnie Coleman was definitely off his mark. I mean, just look at how far his stomach is distended. Jeez, he looks eight months pregnant. There is little separation in his legs and his back overpowers the rest of him. That's not to take anything away from Coleman- he's an awesome bodybuilder and worked hard to come up through the ranks.
In 1992, he placed 16th! He was out in '93; in '94 he placed 15th; in '95 he cracked the top 10, placing 10th; in '96 he placed 6th; in '97 he dropped back to 9th; then in '98 he won and kept on winning. That is an incredible story and truly an accomplishment we should all respect, but it doesn't make him invincible- unless, of course, he's the best he can be. Ronnie Coleman, at his best, is probably unbeatable. To be fair, he did win the Arnold Classic, and about three months later Ronnie was walking around at the Night of Champions in New York and it looked like he had eaten a Volkswagen. Then, four months later was the Olympia. Obviously, had he trained all year he would have been in much better shape. As out of shape as he looked just four months out, it's no wonder he looked the way he did at the O.
I know I'm armchair quarterbacking here, but come on, Ronnie Coleman, in shape, is in a league of his own.
Cutler basically came out of nowhere. In '99 he placed 14th; eighth in 2000 and second in '01. I guess you could say he should be pretty happy with that. I'm sure he is, but I'm not writing this about whether or not Jay should be happy. I'm writing this because the real Mr. Olympia is walking around uncrowned. In any competition, it should be the best man who wins. This year, it didn't happen that way. Ronnie Coleman was not the best man on stage. I guess we could all go away and forget about it, come back next year and hope for better. But, you know what? I'm sick of doing that. True, there's nothing I can do to change what happened, but the travesty would be exacerbated if I didn't say anything about it.
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