August 1, 2006

More Close Calls and Contoversy at the 2006 CBBF Canadian Fitness & Figure Championships

Controversy has long surrounded the CBBF Canadian Fitness and Figure Championships. I remember a competition a few years ago when the results for fitness were so all over the map that it had many in attendance in shock and disbelief, with some competitors even saying, "Why do I compete?" In fact, one of the country’s top fitness competitors quit after that competition due to the judging debacle – she quite literally walked out of the auditorium that night, saying a few choice words as the door slammed behind her, and has never been seen near the competitive stage again.

And there have been many more incidents, some worse than others, including last year’s competition that I wrote about at length already in an article called "Close Calls and Controversy at the 2005 CBBF Canadian Fitness & Figure Championships." This brings us to 2006 – another year, another new promoter, and another chance to see if controversy would erupt again. As you’ll find out, it did – but perhaps we just should have expected it. On the other hand, controversy or not, there were plenty of high points as well that made the 2006 CBBF Canadian Fitness and Figure Championships an event to remember.

Setting the stage

This year’s Canadian Fitness and Figure Championships event was put on by Cabel McElderry, an Alberta-based promoter who’s vowed to stage this event in Edmonton for three years straight. Furthermore, he says that there will be improvements each year as he gets more experience under his belt. I believe that’s a very good thing for this event, since, over the years, it has bounced from promoter to promoter with little change or improvement. McElderry’s commitment might be just what the show needs.

Furthermore, McElderry’s promotional skills appear to be topnotch. From my point of view, the event ran efficiently and professionally without a hiccup on his part. I never heard the competitors complain about the organization of the show, nor did they feel shortchanged or ripped off in terms of the way he ran things. The only wonky thing was that he scheduled the competition for July 1, which is Canada Day. Admittedly, that was a bit of a hassle. But he made up for it in other ways, particularly the prizes he arranged for the top finishers, such as camcorders, MP3 players, and other goodies. Given that this is an amateur show and trophies are all that’s usually awarded, McElderry’s prizes were a welcome addition and will certainly help to entice more competitors in years to come.

The competitors also came through in a big way. There were about 90 women in total, competing in the seven figure and fitness classes – in figure there were Short, Medium, Medium-Tall, Tall, and Masters, while in fitness there were Short and Tall. The competitor turnout was excellent.

On the other hand, the sanctioning body for this event, the Canadian Bodybuilding Federation (CBBF), didn’t exactly bring their A-team to the competition. In fact, the president of the organization, Mark Smishek, didn’t even attend; instead, his underlings ran the show with results that were decidedly mixed, since some of the same old problems that keep creeping in year after year worked their way in again, along with something brand new that I’ve never seen happen at a national-level show that I’ll describe fully below.

Figure

Part of the reason for the controversy surrounding this event is that the CBBF officials are well-known – notorious in some circles – for rewarding competitors whose physiques are simply too heavily muscled for figure. It’s happened repeatedly in previous years, and it happened this year again. In fact, quite a few of the women who hit the stage in Edmonton outweighed and outsized a large number of the women at last year’s Canadian Bodybuilding Championships.

Furthermore, with calls from friends, family and coaches in the audience to "flex those lats" and "show those delts," much of the prejudging was simply relegated to what is seen at a bodybuilding show. That’s not what figure is supposed to be about. But the CBBF officials are doing nothing to curtail this despite the IFBB's recent efforts to tone down the amount of muscle in the women's divisions (the CBBF, which is strictly amateur, operates in Canada only and reports to the IFBB, which oversees international and professional events); in fact, they appear to be encouraging a more muscular look by the way the head judge’s callouts are performed. In the end, it hurts the show’s credibility, and it’s hurting our Canadian competitors in many ways, particularly if they turn pro.

For example, in the August 2006 issue of Oxygen there is an article that states, "Canadian amateur judges prefer a lot of muscle on their athletes and less attention to detail, so when those athletes compete in the IFBB, they have to streamline all that muscle and master the small details that make a pro figure competitor stand out in a lineup." In other words, the look rewarded at the CBBF Canadian Figure Championships isn’t consistent with the look of the pros; that’s precisely why so many of our competitors who do turn pro do so badly when they make the next step. In fact, I believe that if Figure International winner Mary Elizabeth Lado had competed in Edmonton, she would have been out-muscled so badly that she probably wouldn’t have placed in the top half of her class based on the criteria used there. Something’s really wrong with that – particularly since this is the only Canadian-based show where Canada's competitors can turn pro.

Adding more fuel to this fire is the fact that the Canadian competitor who is doing the best so far in the pro ranks, Jane Awad, didn’t attain her pro status from this event. Jane couldn’t even muster a top-ten placing when she competed at this event in 2004, but later that same year she went on to win the Overall title at the IFBB North Americans, which is an amateur show held in the United States that's open to Canadians and Americans. Jane got her IFBB Pro Card there.

Now, some might think that Jane won the IFBB North Americans because she looked drastically different than at the Canadians, but the truth is that she didn’t look much different at all. The biggest difference between the Canadians and the North Americans is the judging criteria. The women who place highest at the North Americans still have muscles, but they tend to be much smaller and less-defined than those you see take the top spots at the CBBF Canadian Fitness and Figure Championships – there’s more of a focus on aesthetics, the "small details," and overall beauty and grace. They're obviously also following the IFBB's guidelines more closely.

Ironically, the competitors all know this discrepancy exists, and it appears that a number of the judges do too (which makes me believe that if the score sheets were disclosed, which they’re not, you’d see that the individual scores were, once again, all over the map). Where things seem to have gone astray appears to be right at the top – the CBBF officials are obviously not looking carefully at what the rest of the world, or even the rest of North America, is doing. Most important, they’re obviously not paying attention to what’s going on in the IFBB pro ranks these days. As I said, if Lado competed here, or even Davana Medina, the reigning Figure Olympia champion, both would probably get blown away.

This, however, isn’t to knock any of the competitors onstage in Edmonton; in fact, quite the opposite. As I said before, most, if not all, of the competitors know the criteria here are off the mark. So a number simply gave the CBBF officials what they want – a big, muscular physique – knowing full well that if they win and turn pro they’ll have to completely rework their physiques to fit in properly, not unlike the many who have gone before them. (Alberta’s Debbie Leung turned pro in 2004 at this event, but is still working at making her physique softer and less muscular to compete more effectively in the pro ranks. Debbie's also been trying to spread the word in the Canadian ranks about what a figure physique is and isn't, which I think is a good thing. But are the right people even listening?)

Still, the controversy didn’t stop with the judging criteria; the other debacle that happened at this event that was, once again, at the expense of competitors was, once again, at the hands of the CBBF’s officials. And it happened at what was probably the most crucial point in the figure competition and, as I mentioned before, is something I've certainly never seen happen before.

At the end of the night show, the four class winners for figure stood onstage: Bonnie McKechnie from British Columbia (Short), Jill St. Laurent from Alberta (Medium), Serena Cooper from Alberta (Medium-Tall), and Jamie Senuk from Alberta (Tall). It was now time to pick the 2006 Canadian Figure Champion. Of all these class winners, I felt the top spot should go to Jamie Senuk. Jamie’s tan was far too dark and distracting in the morning, but she fixed it up by the evening show and looked a whole lot better. I thought that she had the best shape of the four class winners, and her presentation onstage was by far and away superior to the rest.

When the winner was announced, though, it wasn’t Jamie Senuk – it was Serena Cooper. I can’t say I was surprised, though. In figure, clear winners aren’t always apparent (bodybuilding and figure are both subjective, but it seems figure is far more subjective and the results often come down to personal preference), so I simply left the auditorium that night thinking that the judges’ opinion was simply different again from mine – and that was that.

But that wasn’t that. Two hours later, I learned that the Overall winner really was Jamie Senuk. The CBBF officials seem to have messed up the final tally, something they dismissed as a "clerical error" (their words, not mine). Furthermore, the mistake wasn’t discovered until well after the show. I was stunned, and so, too, were the people around me. And what a shame for those competitors who were affected.

Now, granted, mistakes happen, but don’t they – "they" being the CBBF officials, not the individual judges who simply hand in their scores – have a foolproof plan for calculating something as simple as the Overall winner? And doesn’t anyone double-check these things to make sure one person’s error doesn’t result in, well, this happening? I guess not.

I really felt bad for the competitors involved because it affects them directly. Furthermore, this error comes from the same officials who’ve been known to rule their events with an iron-fist that comes down so hard that they’ve sent figure competitors shopping for new shoes at the eleventh hour because they were a millimeter out of spec, and have, in the past, scolded, chastised, and embarrassed competitors onstage for the smallest infractions (even once on TV!). And then this happens. Perhaps if they held themselves to the same rigid standard that they hold competitors to, this "clerical error" wouldn’t have slipped through. But it did, and, once again, it was competitors who paid the price. What’s more, the CBBF has not fully explained exactly how this error happened. There needs to be some real accountability in a situation like this – it should not always be the competitors who pay the price.

On the other hand, I guess that some of the competitors can be thankful that in 2006, the inaugural year for Masters figure (women over 35 years of age), there was no Overall title to be awarded and screwed up again – there was just one class. Lisa Taylor of Alberta ended up being the first-ever winner in what was really an extraordinarily impressive lineup of competitors, most of whom you’d never guess are over 25, let alone 35. The Masters class, I believe, is a step forward for this national event, because it shows that figure competitions aren’t just for women who are twenty-something. Congratulations to all.

Fitness

Unlike figure, fitness wasn’t nearly as controversial this year, but the choice for the Overall winner was quite tight – in fact, it was as much of a close call as when Nina Luchka faced off against Tammy Strome in figure last year at the Canadians, with Tammy taking the Overall title and the IFBB Pro Card (Nina went on to the IFBB North Americans like Jane Awad and won the Overall title, earning her pro status there).

The final showdown in fitness came between Quebec’s Myriam Capes, the Short class winner, and Ontario’s Marnie Holley, the Tall class winner. Myriam had easily won her class title in 2004 and 2005, but never the Overall title. Holley, on the other hand, had never competed at the CBBF Canadian Fitness Championships before this year. (I suspect that Holley probably shocked the judges and the audience by basically coming out of nowhere and establishing herself as one of the best in the country). Both are highly accomplished competitors, and their routines were very exciting to watch.

But despite Marnie’s incredible breakthrough this year, it was Myriam who took the Overall title and the only fitness IFBB Pro Card awarded at this event. (Two IFBB Pro Cards were initially awarded in figure, which were expanded to three as a result of the "clerical error." But only one was ever allocated for fitness. Controversial? You decide.) Marnie was naturally disappointed and Myriam was understandably ecstatic.

Myriam will obviously try her luck in the pro ranks, while Marnie still has years ahead of her to win the Canadian Fitness Champion title, perhaps over and over again. Turning pro isn’t everything – in fact, for many it’s better "to milk the Canadians for all their worth" before moving on (that’s been veteran journalist Garry Bartlett’s good advice for as long as I’ve known him). I’d personally like to see Marnie win the Canadian Fitness Championships two, three, or more times before moving on. She’d make a great multi-year Canadian Fitness Champion.

This year, luckily, fitness ended on a high note, which is important since this sport needs some positive energy and growth.

Wrapping up

Although the CBBF Canadian Fitness and Figure Championships were dogged with controversy again, the end result of this year’s event was pretty positive for a couple of reasons. First, kudos to the competitors – there were about 90 of them at this event, and whether they ended up placing in the top half or bottom half of their classes, they brought the talent and the energy that makes a show happen. Without competitors, the organization and promoter don’t have a competition.

Then, of course, there was promoter Cabel McElderry – he put on a first-rate, expertly executed show, establishing himself as one of the country’s top promoters. And with Cabel promising an even better event next year with even more prizes, this competition should continue to prosper and grow, particularly if the judging standards can improve to be more in line with the rest of North America and the IFBB professional ranks. (In our October issue, you can read about the first-ever David Ford Fitness Model Search that was held the next day at the West Edmonton Mall – McElderry promoted that successfully as well.)

However, the question is, even with all this talent and enthusiasm from the promoter and competitors, can the CBBF keep up and keep the controversy away?

...Doug Schneider
das@seriousaboutfitness.com

For photos of the competition, please see www.ThePhotoIssue.com.

• Go Back