Friday, 02.06. Tallinn Airport, 1 hour until departure. Looking at the security check queue, you can’t help feeling that we’re going to miss our flight; in my long career as a traveler I’ve never seen so many people standing in line. Since it’s just the two of us, Natalia and I, and there are two queues, we try a tactical move and take places in both to see which of us gets through first. The queue, which at first barely moved, gradually starts moving faster and faster, and it turns out that the people ahead of us have even earlier departure times, which gives hope that we’re not the only ones getting nervous. The Tallinn–Kyiv flight departs at 14:00, and the trip goes as planned. The only odd thing is that Estonian Air doesn’t see fit to offer even coffee or tea for free; everything costs money, even though the plane tickets cost thousands of kroons. Unlike Czech Airlines, where the food is perfectly decent, and which we prefer whenever possible, unfortunately you can’t get from Tallinn to Kyiv with any other operator. Long queues await us at Kyiv airport as well, and the immigration card has to be filled in on the plane beforehand. I was lucky to end up in a queue that was served quite quickly, whereas Natalia, as a Ukrainian citizen, was one of the last to be let through the check. Acquaintances were waiting for us at the airport and drove us straight to the “Sport” hotel so that we could register for the competition. Plenty of familiar faces were already there, the delegates and organizers we had been with a week earlier in Viterbo, Italy. We fill in the competitor forms, a passport photo is taken, and we receive our competitor numbers: me no. 14 and Natalia no. 7. Today the formalities are done and it’s time to load. In fact, I’ve been loading since Thursday evening and I’m gradually reducing the amounts of carbohydrates; I’m feeling better, yesterday I felt really flat. On the morning of Saturday, 03.06., it’s good to think that this is the last competition, number 6 already this spring, and then everything is off for a few months. During the day we eat and even manage to sleep for another 2 hours; in recent weeks my sleep has been constantly in deficit, and now it shows. We gather at 16:00, again at the “Sport” hotel, from where the whole group moves on to the venue, “Ukraine Hall”. It later turns out that the Eurovision Song Contest final was held in the same building; the hall holds 4000 people, and generally all the bigger pop stars who visit Ukraine perform there.
Before the competition starts, the group of competitors is called onto the stage and walked through the script: who has to stand where and how things will go on stage. Explaining it was rather difficult, because the majority of the competitors don’t speak much beyond their native language; half of the talk was in Russian and the other half in English. The Poles and the Spaniards seemed to struggle the most; who knows what they learn at school? The stage design was very beautiful: a big ship with men on it. The monument stands on the bank of the Dnieper and is a symbol of the city, and the entrance to the stage was through that ship (like at the Mr. Olympia or the Arnold Classic, which is where the inspiration came from). Each competitor had a dressing room, shared by two. I was on my own, but I teamed up with a Lithuanian so that we could help each other with makeup. The competition was opened by the women with the fitness physique round, with 7 competitors in total, all of them well-known European and world champions and medalists. After that the men were let onto the stage, 16 competitors in total. They were introduced one by one, and since the competition ran under professional rules, the first round was that each man performed the 7 mandatory poses alone on stage. Then came the next round, in which all the men were brought on stage together and their proportions were judged in relaxed stances from the front, the side and the back. Honestly, it was hard to understand the callouts. Each judge called out their own man and then, as they pleased, added other competitors to him, so it was hard to work out who the definite finalists were. All that was clear was that the top three were starting to take shape: Stefan Oroz (IFBB world champion 1990,1992,1995; 2002 overall world champion, disqualified for doping), Dariuz Karpinski (two-time overall European champion in the IFBB 2002, 2006) and Sergei Duhota (Mr. Universe overall winner 2003 in the NABBA). The whole field was very distinguished, because the entry criteria of the Euro Elite Champion Tour are strict: you must be a medalist from the European or World Championships. A large share of them have won title competitions in various years, so every man you manage to beat in this field is a big achievement. After the proportions judging, the comparative judging of the mandatory poses followed immediately. At first I wasn’t called out for quite a while, but fortunately toward the end I got a couple of comparisons in a row, which gave hope of a decent placing. Backstage my condition seemed to be one of the driest, but since many of them are heavyweights, it is hard to stand out in a relaxed stance on stage, as the men’s weights went up to 120kg. My strength is the posing, once you make it into the comparisons. After that round there was a break, and then we started again with the free routines. Since my free routine has been well rated at recent competitions, I hoped to earn some extra points with it this time too; as you may remember, in Lithuania it was rated the best. There was a little confusion when the wrong track was played a couple of times and the competitors ahead of me weren’t able to perform their routines right away. My own performance went well, the audience received it with applause, and I was satisfied. By now the work was, so to speak, done, because all that was left was to wait and see who would make it into the final 5. After the men’s free routines it was the women’s turn.
We changed Natalia’s free routine, because a week earlier a European Championships medal had been lost because of exactly that. We went back to the routine used two years earlier, in which she can move more easily and better show off her background as a rhythmic gymnast. For me as her coach, this routine was considerably better to watch. As an aside, the stage also had a big screen and two identical ones at the sides, from which it was easy, especially during the back poses, to check whether a pose had worked and to adjust if needed, as if in a mirror. After the women’s free routines, all 16 competitors were brought onto the stage to determine the 5 finalists who would continue in the competition. When each man was called out, it felt like a kind of relief whenever your own name wasn’t called. Since the comparisons were so muddled, the results were unexpected for many as well. From the back, places 16 and 15 went to Belarusians (I’ll name a few of the men I know and add information I simply know off the top of my head, since I don’t have the competition protocol). 14th place: the Frenchman Eric Castegnat (-100kg European Championships bronze 2006), 13th place: Marek Borovits (-85kg European Championships bronze 2006), 12th place: Vladislav Piljukov (3rd place at the Worlds, heavyweight, 2005, competition weight 112kg, height 180cm), 11th place: Anatoli Kudlai (10-time Ukrainian champion, 4th place at the “Golden Chestnut” tournament 2005, height 178cm, weight 100kg), 10th place: Ott Kiivikas (7 x Estonian overall champion, European Championships silver 2005, 5th place at the Worlds 2004, height 174cm, weight 90kg), 9th place: the Spaniard Machado (former Mr. Universe in the NABBA), 8th place: a Pole, 7th place: Dmitri Golubotskin (multiple medalist at the Russian championships, height 186cm, weight 120kg), 6th place: Arvidas Mitckus (Lithuanian champion; I beat this man in Lithuania three weeks earlier, when he was in even softer condition, but this time he placed higher; height 178cm, weight 100kg). So the finalists who continued were: 5th place Vitali Grementsukov, Ukraine (European champion 2002, height 163 cm, weight 82 kg, disqualified for doping in 2003 at the Worlds in India, where he took 5th place; his making the final was a surprise to many, since visually the man was not in good condition at all and someone else, considerably better, could have been there in his place, but let’s not forget that he was competing at home), 4th place Armando Villa, Spain (European champion 1999, height 162cm, weight 85kg), 3rd place the Ukrainian Sergei Duhota (Mr. Universe 2003 in the NABBA, height 175cm, weight 105kg), 2nd place Dariuz Karpinski, Poland (2-time overall European champion, who has won 4 major tournaments in a row this year, height 182cm, weight 112kg), 1st place Stefan Oroz, Czech Republic (three-time world and European champion; he made a comeback after a 4-year break from competing. He was disqualified at the 2002 Worlds, which he won but used doping. Height 162cm, weight 88kg). It should be noted that the awards were presented personally by the president of the Ukrainian Olympic Committee, Sergei Bubka (for the younger generation who don’t know who he is, he is one of the most successful athletes of all time in the world, the most successful pole vaulter, and the current world record is also in his name, 6.15 if I’m not mistaken). The guest performer was one of the brightest stars of the bodybuilding world, Dexter Jackson (Arnold Classic winner). Vince Taylor (5-time Masters Olympia winner, who was the guest performer at last year’s women’s European Championships in Yalta) had also been advertised, but for some reason Vince did not appear on stage this time. Those who wanted could have their photo taken with the star. Unfortunately my camera was in the audience, where the photos were being taken from, so we didn’t get a picture together. However, Dexter did prepare backstage with the very same resistance bands that Argo and I use for the exercises on morning TV. I also gave an interview backstage; there was plenty of press and television present, and photos were taken for bodybuilding magazines too, so they should appear in various specialist magazines very soon. Natalia’s last round was the physique round again. Unfortunately, Natalia injured her foot during her free routine: two toes instantly turned dark blue, accompanied by severe pain. We found ice right away and applied it, but whether Natalia could put weight on the foot and keep competing was in serious doubt. Despite the pain, Natalia held up on stage and finished the competition in 6th place. The objective opinion of the people in the hall, and there were quite a few of them, was that she deserved a place in the final, i.e. among the 5, but this time it wasn’t to be. 5th place went to a Czech competitor (6th place at the European Championships a week earlier), 4th place to a Russian (4th place at the European Championships a week earlier), third was the Russian Natalia Mihhailova (European champion +164cm 2006), the silver medal went to the Ukrainian Margarita Belinskaja, who made a comeback in the sport after the birth of a child (previously a European champion and medalist at the Worlds), and the winner was the Russian Svetlana Kotskina (overall European champion 2006 and world champion 2005). The whole competition was superbly organized; over my long competitive career, I can say that in terms of organization it was one of the best, if not the best, competition I have taken part in, and many other competitors shared that opinion. So the first stage of the Euro Elite Champions Tour (Pro Biola International) set a very high bar for the rest. The competition ended quite late, at 22:30, and the evening afterparty took place in one of Kyiv’s brightest nightclubs, “Arena”; the food and drinks were very tasty. In between, the Euro Elite Tour competitor passports were handed out along with the prize money. The prize fund was 15,000$ and was divided as follows: places 15-11 300$, places 10-6 500$, 5th place 800$, fourth place 1000$, third place 2000$, second place 3000$, 1st place 4000$. For the women, respectively: 300$ for places 10-6, 500$ for 5th place, 700$ for 4th place, 1000$ for 3rd place, 1500$ for 2nd place, 2000$ for 1st place. The guest performer at the afterparty was one of Ukraine’s strongest men, who recently also set a Guinness record by pushing 152kg with one hand. The man’s show included the following tricks: first, a strap was tied around another man’s chest (the man’s weight was visually about 85 -90kg), then the strongman took hold of the belt of his trousers and quickly pressed him overhead 10x with one hand! Next, the man took a No. 13-15 wrench and simply snapped it in his hands! Then a square iron bar (a table leg) was brought in; without thinking long, the strongman placed it on top of his head and bent it, then he placed the bent bar around his back and twisted it even more, and finally he snapped it into two pieces. As the last strength number, the man did one-arm push-ups 10 times with the same man on his back, the one he had first lifted with one hand, about 90kg. Well, those are the kind of men who live in this world!
Author: Ott Kiivikas
Come and train! ArtGym
