by Hans
Photography by Hans and GeneX

 

Claire Rohrbacker-O'Connell hits a front double-biceps the morning after winning the lightweights at the 2006 USA in Las Vegas

Almost as soon as Claire Rohrbacker-O’Connell she walked onstage at the 2006 USA in Las Vegas in July, it was obvious the lightweight class was hers. At just under 5-foot and 114 pounds, she looked flawless, with a beautiful x-shape, perfect symmetry and razor-sharp conditioning that made her muscles pop out and made her look much bigger than she really is. In fact, after the pre-judging, some people in the audience were even speculating that she might even win the overall – and her pro card.

In the end, the overall went to heavyweight Heather Policky. But watching Claire hanging out in between photo shoots by the pool at the contest hotel the next morning, you would almost think she had won the whole show. With her husband Shawn and her two daughters, Katelynn, 12, and Lexie, 10, watching, Claire couldn’t have looked happier.

Once you know something about this 38 year-old Californian girl’s life story, it’s easy to see why she was so happy just to be there. The USA was the actually Claire’s first national-level show – even though she had qualified 20 years earlier. She had competed as a bodybuilder as a teenager but then quit at the age of 21. She thought she would never get back onstage again, let alone compete for a pro card. And between her teenage years and the 2006 USA was a 20-year journey of self-discovery that included a battle with bulimia that nearly killed her.

 

Claire Rohrbacker was 14 years-old when her family moved from Maryland to Silicon Valley, where her dad, a physicist, had got a new job. Claire had been a gymnast, but in her sophomore year her new school cut gymnastics. Instead, she decided to try weight training in her physical education class. With the foundation gymnastics had given her, she quickly found her body responding to the weights. “I noticed right away I was getting biceps,” she says. “I was like, ‘Cool!’”

Pretty soon Claire was hooked. Her parents agreed to get her a gym membership and she attended her first show – the first time she had seen female bodybuilders. “I just liked the look of the muscles,” she says. “It was just cool looking to me.” She started buying all the bodybuilding magazines she could get hold of and joined a hardcore gym where she became, as she puts it, “everybody’s little sister.”

Claire did her first show in Santa Cruz as a high school junior, weighing just 84 pounds. Over the next two years she did more shows than she can remember, competing against women like Cathey Palyo, later a pro and Ms Olympia contender. In 1984 alone she did six shows. “I just competed and competed and competed,” she says. “There was no-one smart enough to tell me, ‘If you want to get bigger, you need to take time off.”

At one show in California, Claire’s mom was approached by Mary Roberts, then one of the top female pros in the world and one of Claire’s idols, who was guest posing at the show. She said she thought Claire had potential and wanted to train her. After graduating from high school (and promising to her parents that she would go to college as well), Claire moved to Orange County and trained with Mary for a year.

In 1986 Claire won the lightweights at the Teen USA and the following year at the Teen Nationals (both times the overall winner was Lisa Nasound, who fans may remember seeing on the cover of Muscle & Fitness with Clint Eastwood in 1988). She even appeared in Flex. It seemed like she had the bodybuilding world at her feet. “This was what I was going to do for the rest of my life,” she says.

Claire as a 21 year-old with her bodybuilding trophies

However, her family had other ideas. Although they had supported her until then, her parents thought it was time she quit bodybuilding and do what a girl was supposed to do - settle down and have a family. Although she loved bodybuilding, Claire moved back to Silicon Valley and quit at the age of 21. “I was young and I was being pulled in so many different directions,” she says. “I figured that’s what I would have to do.”

The next ten years of Claire’s life were unhappy ones as she tried to live up to other people’s expectations of her instead of pursuing her own dreams. She gotmarried twice, and although she never stopped working out, she tried to lose weight and ended up becoming bulimic. “I wanted to be model-thin so I’d fit in with everybody,” she says. She finally hit rock bottom after nearly dying in her mid-twenties. “That was the turning point,” she says.

 

Claire onstage at the 2006 USA

By the time she was in her early thirties, Claire - now a mom – had turned her life around. She was in the gym a lot, teaching kickboxing and spinning, and began to start thinking about bodybuilding again. “One day I was like, ‘You know, why can’t I do what I really want to do?” she says. Encouraged by her new husband, Shawn O’Connell – who worked out and had competed once in his twenties – she started putting the size she had lost back on.

Claire finally got back onstage in 2004, winning the lightweight overall in both the Central Valley Classic and the San Jose Bodybuilding Championships, the lightweight class at the Sacramento and the Las Vegas Bodybuilding Classic. She spent 2005 adding more size, especially in her shoulders and back, to be competitive at national-level. This year, with the help of her trainers, Ed and Betty Pariso, she won the lightweight and overall at the Contra Costa and the California State – both shows she had competed in as a teenager two decades earlier.

Winning the Contra Costa was special for Claire because there were so many people from the California bodybuilding scene there who knew her when she competed as a teenager. She was overwhelmed with the reactions she got to her physique. “Everybody was amazed that such a little bodybuilder could be that big-looking and that feminine,” she says. “I was on a high for a week!” she says.

Claire had originally planned to do Nationals this November, but after doing so well at the Cal she decided to do the USA instead. She hoped to make the top five, but it was only she was called out first in the pre-judging and put in the middle that she realized she had a shot at winning the class. “I was like, ‘Wow, this is cool!’” she says. As for the overall, Claire says she was so happy to just win her weight class that she felt no pressure. “It was just great to be up there with the other girls and not be stressed about winning the overall,” she says.

Claire’s plan for next year is to move up to the middleweights and hopefully get that pro card. She says she will definitely do the Nationals in Dallas next fall and may also do the USA again. She is realistic enough to know that it’s going to be tough placing in a pro show at her height - especially as there are no weight classes anymore - but she’d at least like to get there. “Just to be called a pro is what I’m shooting for,” she says.

Claire's website is at at www.clairerohrbacker-oconnell.com.

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