The Sixties:
In the sixties most of the top bodybuilders I read about in magazines lived and trained in California. In this period there was certainly some fierce competition around-Frank Zane, a man who prepares as thoroughly for a contest as anyone else in bodybuilding, Franco Columbu, who went from being a great powerlifter to a Mr. Olympia practically by sheer determination of will; and, of course, Sergio Oliva.
Frank Zane
Anytime people discuss who might be the best bodybuilder of all time, the name Sergio Oliva inevitably comes up. He and I had some unbelievable confrontations onstage. Sergio was so good he could beat you in the dressing room if you weren’t careful. His shirt would come off, and there would be that incredible mass. He would transfix you with a look, exhale with a kind of animal grunt, and suddenly the lats would begin to flare and just when you thought they were the most unbelievable lats you ever saw, they would come, more and more, until you began to doubt that this was a human being you were looking at. Larry Scott had won the first two Mr. Olympia contests, and I knew I would eventually have to beat Larry and other top stars like Chuck Sipes. But one bodybuilder that was really impressive, not just because of his outstanding physique but also because of the image he was able to create, was Dave Draper.
Draper represented the epitome of California bodybuilders-big, blond, and sun-tanned, with a personable manner and winning smile. Surrounded as I was by three feet of snow in the middle of an Austrian winter, the image of Dave Draper on a California beach was a very attractive one indeed. And Dave’s roles in movies like Don’t Make Waves with Tony Curtis and his appearances on television shows made me aware of the possibilities of bodybuilding beyond the competition arena.
In the 1960s there were two distinct worlds in bodybuilding: Europe and America. My Universe titles in ‘67 and ’68 established me as the preeminent bodybuilder in Europe (Ricky Wayne wrote in an article, “If Hercules were to be born today his name would be Arnold Schwarzenegger”), but the question still remained as to how well I would do against the American champions.
Across the ocean there was Dave Draper, Sergio Oliva, Chet Yorton, Frank Zane, Bill Pearl, Freddy Ortiz, Harold Poole, Ricky Wayne, and others.
As the sixties drew to a close, six names emerged as dominant among the ranks of those who had been competing in the championship events: Dave Draper, Sergio Oliva, Bill Pearl, Franco Columbu and Frank Zane.
