Just Who Should Judge Bodybuilding Contests

One or two things I want to talk about this month; things which have been churning around in the brain box for a week or two. These are judging Bodybuilding Contests - can audiences do it better? Also, the matter of learning about gear before that first cycle which we will take a look at in next weeks article. First the question of using audiences for the judging of bodybuilding contests. This idea comes up every so often but in the last few months I have heard the suggestion coming from several quarters. It's a daft idea and needs to be shot down for good. I know that we have all complained about bad judging, competitors and audiences alike and we have all at some time or other jeered at some ludicrous placings at contests at all levels from local open shows to major Pro shows - and watched disgruntled competitors smash their trophies. I have seen some contests where my selection of the winner has been placed 6th and vice versa. I cannot claim that I have a greater ability to judge than the official judges and there have been occasions when my position in the hall was such that my view was not good enough to be completely sure in my selections but still there have been many times when I and many others wondered what was going on.

Were the judges biased or just incompetent? Many people would like to have a better system which could get more consistent results. Every competitor has a right to expect competent judging and a fair crack of the whip. These days the physique standards are so high that a serious competitor will have spent lots of money and shed blood, toil, tears and sweat to get ready for the show. He or she deserves the best of treatment. But unfortunately there are no absolutes in bodybuilding; it's all a matter of opinion. Generally, the complaints about judging are centred on Men's Classes. This is because when it comes to judging Women's Classes there are additional nebulous factors involved in selecting the winner. The criteria for judging women are changed quite regularly and then need to be re-interpreted. The fundamental question is, "How much muscle should a woman carry without looking non-feminine?" There is, of course, no answer to this.

Any woman competitor carries much more muscle than any average woman - they are bodybuilders after all - just as somebody like Marcus Ruhl carries much more muscle than any average man. In fact the difference between Marcus Ruhl and the average man is greater than the difference between any Ms. Olympia competitor and an average woman. But he is still undoubtedly a man. Convention says that a woman should be a stick insect with big tits! I would not have much confidence in a mainly male audience selecting the winners in women's events. At last year's EFBB Finals the judges chose a well built but smoother type physique for the winner of the Women's Middleweight Class yet chose the most muscular woman in the class as the heavy-weight winner. But the middle-weight took the Overall Title. I am not saying this was wrong, it is just another complication. Competence in judging is something that comes from experience - and on-going experience at that. Judges must attend contests regularly throughout every year and keep up-to-date with the standards of physiques. Audiences are often well informed and can make good judgements of the quality of physiques on display and this is the basis of the idea of getting audiences involved in the judging. But audiences can make reasonable judgements only because, ultimately, their decisions do not matter. No audience is specially selected and most of the time they will cheer their favourites, be he from their own gym in a local contest or representing Britain in an international show; but they will still recognise that a Ronnie Coleman is better than a Gary Lister - this is not a slight on Gary Lister, it's just that Coleman is accepted as being the best in the world at the present time. But if the judging was made by the audience, how do you ensure that the audience really is impartial? And how will they behave when they know that they are selecting the winners and losers?

Last year I went to one show at which one of the competitors - a man with a good quality physique and one who would be expected to do well - brought along a massive number of supporters from his gym. It was good that he got such support for the show but then a good portion of the audience could no longer be considered impartial. When their man was on stage they cheered him all the time but unfortunately his was not the best physique on the day and he didn't win. Had the audience been voting, the wrong man would probably have won. But even if he had been the best man on stage other competitors could have complained, accusing the audience of being biased. If a very large number of supporters comes from one gym it is likely also that many of them are not experienced in judging physiques and would decide the winner for all kinds of arbitrary reasons - like he comes from our gym. In a major contest it would be possible for a competitor to arrange to pack the audience with supporters and if they really wanted to fix things, to bribe them to take the right decisions.

If audiences are to be the judges then a system has to be devised for selecting a truly impartial audience. This is how judges should always be selected, the difference now is only that instead of say 6 to 10 judges you have to find a few hundred, all of whom will agree to turn up on the day when chosen and stop anybody else getting into the hall. No this idea of having audiences as judges is a non-starter and should be forgotten for good.