View from the Top
By George De Pirro, Senior Editor, FLEX
Photography by Kevin Horton
With a unanimous score and a nearly flawless physique, Iris Kyle repeats as Ms. Olympia champion.
Iris Kyle is not a freak. She isn’t a mass monster, either. In fact at 5′7" and 161 pounds, she ranks near the average for American women, according to a national health survey completed in 2002. Average is the last adjective you would use to describe her physique, though. With hard and thoughtful training, intelligent dieting, a fortuitously muscular genetic predisposition and quiet but rock-solid confidence, Kyle sets the standard for women’s bodybuilding in the post-Kim Chizevsky era.
A few years ago, when all the talk in the sport was about reducing size by 20% and increasing femininity, Kyle simply went about her business, and did it spectacularly at that. Now, she has a physique that is unequaled in symmetry and shape. After this year’s Ms. O, Kyle said, "I’m going to keep on doing what I’m doing. If it’s not broken, why try to fix it?"
As long as Kyle’s superiority stays intact, that leaves repeating runner-up Dayana Cadeau scrambling to find an edge. The Haitian-born Canadian champion may have proportionally bigger muscles than Kyle, as well as a significant taper to a tiny waste. When Kyle and Cadeau accepted the dare of Bob Cicherillo, co-emcee of the women’s press conference (with eight-time Ms. O Lenda Murray), to give the audience a taste of what was in store by revealing their legs and abs, it was a highlight. Cadeau said, "I did my best. What more can I do? I improved my abs, because I knew it was one of my weaknesses. The judges wanted me to work on it and I did."
Yaxeni Oriquen-Garcia returned to a form more comparable to the one that earned her victory in 2005, instead of her off-the-mark seventh-place physique of last year, to end up third for the fourth time. Like many of the athletes, Oriquen-Garcia had tightened up and dried out considerably for the finals, held about eight hours after the prejudging. Always tight and dry, Lisa Aukland finished fourth.
In her Olympia debut, Hearther Armbrust completed an impressive first pro season in fifth place. With another year or two of seasoning, she should be the favorite in any show she enters; she is that good.
Although the placing seemed appropriate, a simple change in the prejudging callouts could have cleared up some lingering suspicions. The judges called out four sets of four athletes (with Canadian rookie standout Nicole Ball in two groupings). Then, the judges called the same four groups again. Instead, it would have been more interesting to see callouts with the taller and bigger-muscled women (Armbrust, Tazzie Colomb, Oriquen-Garcia, Bonny Priest and Kyle) and the shorter and lighter competitors (Antoinette Thompson, Ball, Cadeau, Valentina Chepiga and Mah-Ann Mendoza). As it stood, Armbrust and sixth-placed Betty Pariso weren’t directly compared to the top four until the posedown.
No matter how the salad was tossed, however, it was clear from the beginning that Kyle was likely going to continue to set the pace for the ideal feminine physique with her third Ms. O. victory (not counting a heavyweight-class win in 2001). Until somebody brings a more perfect package than Kyle, we can expect more of the same from the 33-year-old queen of muscle.
