Vanier Hall will be a house of muscle on Saturday.
The local venue is hosting the Iron Ore Classic bodybuilding competition, which will feature eight divisions spread between morning and evening shows. A highlight of the event will be an evening appearance by guest poser Dani Reardon of Orlando, Fla. Reardon has her International Federation of Bodybuilding pro card and, earlier this month, placed second at the Ms. Physique Olympia contest in Las Vegas.
For Iron Ore promoter Karley Green, Reardon's success at the international competition couldn't have been timed more perfectly.
"I'm really excited that she placed that high," Green said. "I was like, 'Yay, we have a superstar!' For her to be such a young athlete (26), she has just skyrocketed up the charts in the last year. No one knew about her and then all of a sudden she just kicked everybody's butt."
The morning show runs from 9 to 11:30 a.m. and the evening show goes from 6 to 9 p.m. Reardon is expected to be on the stage at about 7:15 p.m.
Men's divisions at the Iron Ore Classic are bodybuilding, classic physique and men's physique.
"(The) bodybuilding (division) is as muscular as you can be, symmetrical in an X frame, and classic physique is more like 1980s bodybuilding," Green said. "They're trying to mimic Arnold Schwarzenegger - so not quite a Y frame, but it's more aesthetic and a little bit smaller than bodybuilding. And then men's physique is male fitness model, so they're very aesthetic. They're the people you're going to see on the front of the magazines."
Women's divisions are bikini, figure, fitness, women's physique and bodybuilding.
"Bikini is very long, beautiful, graceful physique," said Green, who is a physique competitor, local gym owner and trainer. "There's figure and fitness. They look more like a tennis athlete. They're a little bit thicker, and the difference between figure and fitness is that fitness does a 60-second routine where they're doing round-offs and that kind of thing. Then we have women's physique, which is '80s women's bodybuilding. It's going for that very aesthetic but muscular frame, and then bodybuilding, which is the same as the guys - as muscular as you can get, being symmetrical top to bottom, front to back."
Forty-two athletes from around the province have registered for the Iron Ore Classic, including locals John Brink and Jason Keller. Brink is approaching his 76th birthday, while Keller is a former boxer who turned to bodybuilding after an injury forced him to hang up his gloves. Vanderhoof's Diane Sim, who lost more than 200 pounds after a lifestyle change, will also be part of the show.
The grand prize at the Iron Ore Classic - an event sanctioned by the B.C. Amateur Bodybuilding Association and presented by the Brink Group - is a vacation voucher worth $4,000.
Tickets for the Iron Ore Classic are available through Ticketmaster and will also be for sale at the door (cash only).
This is the second year for a rebooted Iron Ore Classic. Prior to last year, a sanctioned bodybuilding event hadn't been held in Prince George since 1995.
