Heavyweight logjam:

Why the NPC should create a fourth weight class

by Hans

Amanda Dunbar (left) and Kristy Hawkins (right)

The NPC Junior Nationals always throws up future stars and this year was no exception. 23 year-old Amanda Dunbar and 22 year-old Kristy Hawkins, who placed third and fourth in the middleweight class, were both making their national level debuts. With beautiful shape and incredible size and thickness for their age, they both have great futures ahead of them in the sport. In a few years, they could be pros.

But Amanda and Kristy now face a dilemma. At Junior Nationals Amanda weighed in at 132 pounds at 5-foot-4 and Kristy at 130 pounds at 5-3, both close to 132, the cut-off for middleweights. Another year of training and they will have no choice but to move up a weight class. So, after making their national-level debuts, Amanda and Kristy now face the daunting challenge of stepping up to the heavyweights and competing with the big girls.

The pool of heavyweight women competing at the national level in the NPC today is staggering. Amanda and Kristy will be up against women over ten years older and with the muscle maturity to show for it, women like Heather Policky (5-foot-7 and around 165 pounds in contest shape), Lora Ottenad (5-8, 160) and Sherry Smith (5-foot-7, 155).

Just how competitive the heavyweights are right now was illustrated at the USA in Las Vegas in July, where 26 heavyweights competed in the biggest class of the show. At 5-foot-5 and 159 pounds, Bonny Priest won the class and the overall and with it a pro card. But behind her were two previous winners of the class - Colette Nelson, who had won for the last two years but missed out on the overall, and Lora Ottenad, who won the class in 2000. Then there was the phenomenal Heather Policky and a whole raft of veterans of NPC national-level shows like Annie Rivieccio and Jayne Trcka.

"There are so many women out there that have been doing it for years and all deserve a pro card," Amanda Dunbar says. "It's going to be a lot tougher than the middleweights."

In fact, there is now a logjam in the heavyweight class of the NPC. With a pro card only for the class winner at Nationals and for the overall winner at the USA, there's a long line of heavyweight women with incredible physiques waiting for one. Throw in the inconsistency of the judging and the way the NPC seems to be handing out pro cards to figure girls like candy, and you can see how some of them are getting disillusioned.

I think it's time the NPC split the heavyweights and created a fourth class - either a light-heavyweight or a super-heavyweight. (The NPC has six classes for the men, including a light-heavyweight and a super-heavyweight.) In the past, there may have been too few competitors to justify more weight classes in female bodybuilding. But, as the USA illustrates, that is definitely no longer the case for the heavyweights.

The reality is that while classes have been the same for years, women's bodybuilding has progressed. Ten or fifteen years ago it might have been unusual for a woman 5-foot-4 or under to come in at over 132 pounds. But these days, as the emergence of a new generation of athletes like Amanda Dunbar (5-4) and Kristy Hawkins (5-3) illustrates, there are women under that height who are hitting the ceiling of the middleweight class in their early twenties. Unless something is done, the heavyweight class is just going to get more and more overcrowded.

A fourth weight class would certainly make things a little fairer for up-and-coming athletes like Amanda and Kristy, who have become victims of their own success. Amanda says she now plans to take a year off to add size, and come back at the Nationals in 2004, weighing in at 142 and carbing up to 145. But that will still leave her some distance short of the likes of Heather Policky. Instead of making the jump straight up from the middleweights to competing against the sport's biggest women, a new weight class would mean athletes like her could find a space somewhere in between.