Muscling in on exotic universe can build up to deadly consequences

When I travelled to Cardiff to meet Grant Thomas, I knew as much about bodybuilding as other mere mortals - a contest called Mr Universe had been won by the bold Schwarzenegger. It was the day after Princess Diana had died and things felt unreal, so the big, orange man who answered the door to his house on one of Cardiff’s tough estates merely added to the strange aura.

Grant was a few weeks away from Mr Universe, which was now a contest for amateur bodybuilders. He was eating six meals a day, consuming in a week 21 chickens, 40 cans of tuna and 210 egg whites, plus most of a large tub of whey protein that cost 70.

When not eating, he would sit on his sofa drinking de-ionised water, or go to the gym. This regime had taken him from 10 stones to 16 stones in five years.

Grant was a real-life Rocky Balboa, dreaming of escape. His hero was a man named Dorian Yates, who came from Birmingham. Dorian was the biggest man in the world. He was much bigger than Mr Universe. He was Mr Olympia, the greatest bodybuilder on earth, and he had been for half a decade.

Dorian earned hundreds of thousands of pounds a year, and did so because he was bigger, harder, drier, more rippled than anyone had been. When Arnold Schwarzenegger was Mr Olympia, from 1970-75 and again in 1980, he stood 6ft 2in and weighed 16st 6lb. Dorian was 5ft 11in and 19st 4lb.

I got to know Dorian Yates. His career had ended after six Mr Olympias, when he ripped the triceps muscle off the bone of his left arm just before the big show. The man who could bench press 500lbs could not even pull his trousers up, but he had somehow managed to win this last title. An operation repaired the damage, but he had decided to retire.

Dorian invited me to the Dutch Grand Prix, a tournament that he promoted. There I met the real freaks who had followed him: Chris Cormier, a woozy Californian with an epic physique; Markus Ruhl, a mammoth German who was headed north of 300lb; Ronnie Coleman, the reigning Mr Olympia, a Texan who was worshipped by the fans for his insane structure and freakish size.

These men were Schwarzenegger’s heirs, modern behemoths who had been inspired by the movie Pumping Iron, which was distributed in 1977 and made bodybuilding briefly glamorous. They existed in a hermetically-sealed sport in which they exhibited themselves to other people interested in bodybuilding while the rest of the world ignored them.

They were the winners in the size wars, but there had been casualties: they were gym rats who had embraced the great steroid myth - that they could turn anyone into a Mr Olympia - and had ended up bloated and squishy, with halitosis and no money.

Even the tiny few blessed with genetics that let them respond to the training, diet and drugs like almost no-one else alive found that the damage could be incremental, progressive and unpredictable.

Andreas Munzer was from Pack, a village in Styria a few miles from where Schwarzenegger had grown up in Austria. He died in 1996, 12 days after finishing sixth in the Arnold Classic, the Terminator’s own tournament. Andi’s body had suffered a catastrophic shutdown brought on by the use of steroids and diuretics. His liver had melted, his heart had failed.

Mohamed Benaziza perished in 1992, suffering a heart attack on the European tour after abusing the diuretics Lasix and Aldactone. Mike Matarazzo collapsed at the Arnold Classic in 1993, but recovered after prompt treatment. Paul Dillett "froze" on stage at the Arnold in 1994, too dehydrated to move.

Steve Michalik, a former Mr America, narrowly survived his preparation for a contest called Night Of Champions in 1986. He had cysts in his liver the size of golf balls. The Mentzer twins, Mike and Ray, died within a day of each other in strange circumstances.

Bodybuilding remains extreme. By the time we reached Las Vegas for the Mr Olympia show of 2003, the extremity of it was apparent, but I did not really care. Bodybuilders were wildly-interesting characters, unlike the usual monosyllabic modern sportsmen. They lived lives that were hard and obsessive, that pushed them towards their limits; they were as determined and driven as any competitors I had met. And they were fun.

In his role of governor of California, Schwarzenegger often mentions the lessons that bodybuilding taught him. Like boxing, the sport has touched and changed a lot of lives, many more than it has cost. He turned up in Las Vegas to make a speech to that effect and to give the bodybuilders their prizes, and he was surrounded by FBI bodyguards the entire time.

Today, Ronnie Coleman, Chris Cormier and Markus Ruhl will take the stage of Wembley Conference Centre to contest the British Grand Prix, the last big show of the year. Grant Thomas won’t be there. He did become Mr Universe 1997, but he found the gap between Universe and Olympia too onerous to bridge.

When I spoke to him recently, though, he was thinking of giving it another go, just for the fun of it.

Just because muscle might offer him an escape.

Muscle: A Writer’s Trip Through A Sport With No Boundaries, by Jon Hotten, is published by Yellow Jersey (10.99). More information at www.musclethebook.com