The Ruthless Report 4: Waiting for Julianna…and More
Anyone who was surprised that Julianna Malacarne won the New York Pro Women's Physique Championship in her first stab at WPD on May 19 was not paying attention back a year and a half ago when NPC and IFBB officials were creating the new women's sport. To a man (or woman), when pressed to name someone who might be an idea WPD candidate—someone who was too big for figure but not as big as a bodybuilder—they cited Malacarne, a Brazilian-born bombshell and mesomorph who never found herself in the winner's circle in figure. So it was only natural that if Julianna decided to get back onstage in physique, she'd do extremely well.
Of course, not everyone agreed that she was the obvious winner in New York. "They don't know what the hell they're looking for," declared one observer in the forum where I was lurking—after his favorite didn't get the callout. "They judge every show different. It's getting old." insisted another, who apparently never heard the adage, The judges can only pick from what's standing in front of them.
I dunno: muscle, curves, calves, conditioning and shape, shape, shape. Malacarne is exactly what officials had said said they wanted even if they hadn't mentioned her by name. From nine women at the first show to 29 in New York last weekend, the lineups and the decisions have been, as Steve Wennerstrom put it, evolving. It was the toughest show so far—and the largest—with the greatest pool of credible contenders. Still, I can't help thinking that maybe, a little, we were all just waiting for Julianna.
More Bombshells
These would be Bombshells of the Shannon Dey's training team variety, Gennifer Strobo and Jaime Baird, who I ran into backstage at Jim Manion's gignormous NPC/IFBB Pittsburgh Championships on May 5. In the crowded dressing area—350 or so amateurs and 51 pros hit the stage at the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Auditorium—they welcomed me to a corner full of Bombshells in prep, and I welcomed them to my hometown. Mama Bombshell Shannon was there as well, busy clucking around the final details for athletes she'd brought to compete in the various divisions and much too busy to talk. Not so Gen and Jaime, who were revved up and ready to get back onstage after faring very well at the judging.
They are very good friends offstage, they said, and both have been Bombshells since the beginning. “We are the original Bombshell gangstas!” they announced in unison, complete with the appropriate hand motion. Jaime, who was the defending Pittsburgh Pro Bikini champ, joined the program in 2007. She did figure B.B.—before bikini. "I beat her at the ’08 Southern States," she said, pointing at Gen, who quipped right back, “She loves to tell that story."
Later the good buds both both got beaten, as Gen took second to Candice John in the figure contest and Jaime was runner-up to India Paulino in bikini, both also Bombshells, by the way, so I guess that takes the sting out of it a little.
Homegirls
As a native Pittsbur
gh girl (long transplanted to So Cal), I take a lot of pride in the local talent who make good on the bodybuilding stage. Wandering the lobby at this year's trip to the NPC/IFBB Pittsburgh, I ran into a couple of the best—’10 NPC National champ Amber DeFrancesco and ’02 National champ Sarah Dunlap. Both, not surprisingly, also won the NPC Pittsburgh Championships on their way to the top.
Amber came first. Although I had admired her physique in print, I had never met her. So when I spotted her working the Species Nutrition booth, I trotted over to make her acquaintance. After a round of Pittsburgh geography, we got down to talking bodybuilding. Amber, who won the Pittsburgh in 2007, has always taken her time between competitions, but the time for her pro debut had come. And she'd be making it in bodybuilding, not physique (in case anyone was wondering)—at the Europa Battle of Champions in Hartford, Connecticut, on June 29 and 30. A wise decision, said I, as former flexers seem to be dropping like flies in the women's physique (see below).
The 5'6" Amber, whose husband Kirk is also a top bodybuilder, is a considered a less-mass, more-symmetry style of flexer, for all she was a heavyweight. That's one pro debut I'll be keeping an eye on.
Sarah Dunlap I'd met before, standing in almost the same spot in the Soldiers and Sailors lobby in 2003, not long after she won the ’02 National Heavyweight and Overall Championships. Graduating from the University of Pittsburgh also in 2002, she made a few appearances in the pros and then came back with a streamlined look to take the lightweight class and overall at the Jan Tana Pro Classic in 2007. A ninth-place finish at the ’07 Ms. Olympia followed. She hadn't competed for five years, but there she was
back in the Soldiers and Sailors lobby, talking with Ohio promoter Dave Liberman, who motioned for me to come over.
How was she doing? The obvious question. "I'll be 32 in June, and I'm happy," declared Dunlap, who was one of the youngest NPC National champs ever at 21 and has admitted that she'd had some growing up to do. She was back in the Pittsburgh area after a few years in Chicago, she said, working in medical records by day as well as doing landscape design, a field I remember her talking about way back when.
Bodybuilding had consumed her, to the exclusion of all the other activities she loved, she said, like ice skating and rolller-blading. Now there was more balance, but, unfortunately, athletics of any kind had come to an end last fall, when she underwent a femoral osteotomy, a realignment of the right leg. Fortunately, she did not take it lying down. As the accompanying photo shows, Dunlap was out of her wheelchair and on the mend—and still able to hit a credible biceps shot.
More WPD Talk
Regarding pro flexers trying out women’s physique: The judges have continued to repeat (and follow) their mantra that it's not bodybuilding light, it's figure heavy. Nowhere has that been clearer than in the
fate of most female bodybuilders who have tried to dial it down for the new sport. With the exception of Karen Nascimento, a ”smaller” athlete who didn't compete that long in the pros, the panels have not been kind. Veteran Dayanna Cadeau, a Ms. Olympia and Ms. International winner in the lightweight class, found that out the hard way in at the New York Pro, where she was still carrying way too much muscle, despite her legendary symmetry and presentation, and didn't make the top 15.
Are the panels too hard on competitors who switch to physique from bodybuilding? Not in this opinion (so far), although, clearly, dropping size is only the first step. Also clear: it will take a lot longer than eight months—Cadeau competed in the ’11 Ms. Olympia last September—to transform a physique, not to mention the judges’ longtime impressions.
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