Thursday 16 November 2017

Natalia Brings Us Together

We female muscle heads are a much more disparate bunch than we are usually given credit for, but there are moments when we (more or less) er, come together.

That's what Swell says anyway. Needed a bit of help with this post, and thankfully the main man's vacation has taken him away, but not out of mobile range, and C. Moore has found that as well as having the FMS minions at my disposal, I also have a phone that I don't have to pay the bill for. They might regret that. Ol' Swell had a fair fair few opinions and views on the subject of today's post, and C. Moore is not a fast typist.

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Apparently, we're already into the 2018 Olympia qualification series, and San Diego's Ultimate Warriors Pro (Women's Physique only) is (one of?) the first contests of said series. Hold up, C. Moore! I hear you cry. Surely you've made a mistake. "Women's Physique only", but that's Natalia Coelho above, and she competes in Figure.

Indeed she did.

DID.

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Her last (probably) show in Figure was the Olympia - according to Swell, that is, the minions being far too busy tracking down perfectly striated glutes in the highest possible definition to check these things right now. Swell says she didn't place, which seems to C. Moore to be a bit unlikely given the evidence before my eyes (and my joy trumpet, which is damn near singing already). Anyway, guess she had enough after that and decided to flex for her supper in Physique. What an entrance she's made!

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Natalia @Figure Olympia 2017

So it's one Physique show, one win. And it's not like she beat nobody (Swell says). There were 20 women in all, including 2017 Physique Olympians Melissa Pearo and Margita Zamolova, plus Antoinette Downie who was an Olympian in 2016. Also in the line-up and making their pro debuts were Russian sensation Valentina Mishina and Brazil's 2017 Arnold Amateur Physique winner Priscila Cavilha.

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The Competition - top: Downie (2nd), Pearo (5th); bottom: Mishina (4th), Cavilha (3rd)

Natalia was several cuts above them all - again, I'm paraphrasing. Her conditioning was as jaw-dropping as it had been in Las Vegas, but here it counted for, not against, her.

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Natalia @Ultimate Warriors Pro 2017

It was a "moment", Swell says, returning to the thoughts we started this post with. Natalia moving up to Physique has caused a fair stir, it seems, a stir Swell thinks is much like Dani Reardon in St,Louis, or Shannon Courtney at the NPC USAs, or Alina's first Olympia, or Sarah Hayes that time in Tampa... He went on, and he went back, but C. Moore couldn't keep up. He'd started babbling, and rather than run up the phone bill (editorial, take note of C. Moore's economising) I made out he was breaking up and cut him off. I'd got the gist - many many joy trumpets sounding out more or less simultaneously as the contest photos go up. For a day or two at any given moment there is a Natalia tribute happening somewhere in the world. For a day or two we (maybe not all of us, but the vast majority) are all looking at the same body.

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All coming [sic - ed.] together.

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