Dayana Cadeau may be making the switch at the right time and announced it last month on her Facebook page:

“I would like to thank all my fans for their support for all these years of my bodybuilding career. This weekend was my last Olympia show as a bodybuilder. I’m gonna do Women’s Physique as an IFBB pro. Much better for me.”

Throughout her 16-year bodybuilding career, Cadeau has competed in numerous shows each year and was a regular at the Arnold Classic and Ms. Olympia. As recently as the last Arnold, she finished in the top 10, and was in the top six at the 2010 Olympia.

But now she is delving into a new class that people are still curious about. Physique is said to be in between bodybuilding and figure, so someone with as much muscle mass as Cadeau will have to a lot of modifications to her routine and diet in order to bring it down.

It remains to be seen the effect that WPD will have on the industry and if other female bodybuilders will follow Cadeau. And then there is the question of how many amateur competitors will go into physique instead of bodybuilding. These are all things that will play themselves out.

But for now, it will be very interesting to see the transformation of Dayana Cadeau.

In 2008, Yaxeni Oriquen won her third Ms. I and finished in third place at the O. She always comes in ready and this show should be no exception.

Dayana Cadeau will be looking to do some damage. She was visibly disappointed when her name was announced as fifth at the Ms. O and that may have given her that extra incentive to work on her weaknesses.

There will 13 women gunning for Kyle, who will turn 35 this August. This will be her 15^th year competing and although her recent record may not reflect it, time may be running out on her to keep up with a hungry field. Age may be just a number, but training and dieting time and time again can get difficult, even for a seasoned pro like Kyle.

A few other names to keep an eye on are Betty Adkins (2008 Ms. Olympia runner-up), Cathy LeFrancois and Dena Westerfield, who could sneak up on some people for a respectable finish. Dr. Dena may be three years older than Kyle, but has only been competing since 2006 and can be likened to a fresh body off the bench in the fourth quarter of a close game. In five shows on the professional circuit, Westerfield has two top three and four top six finishes.

They say you have to knock out the champ to take the title. There will be a lot of ladies wearing the proverbial boxing gloves in one week.

They say the best place to hide a tree is in the forest, but how does that transcend in the world of women’s fitness competitions? Female bodybuilders have obviously used heavy doses of anabolic steroids and not many would be surprised if one of the Ms. Olympia competitors tested positive. It was supposed to be a different story when the other women ‘s categories came into play. Fitness and Figure classifications were viewed differently, but that may have changed.

Julie Coram’s positive test for three different types of anabolic steroids may have – fairly or unfairly – changed the public’s perception on the sports. A urine sample taken after she won the female muscle model category at the Ainsley McSorley FAME Model Search Championships in Winnipeg, Manitoba on May 24 revealed high levels of boldenone, oxandrolone and DHEA.

Before the urinalysis was completed, Coram won a second contest, the 2008 Miss Fitness Maintoba. Once the results were released, the FAME World Tour stripped her of her title. There was no report of the Manitoba Body Building Association taking any action against Coram in regards to the second contest, with the organization’s president, Tom Heffner, questioning the validity of the FAME test.

What makes this an interesting case is that the competitors are not normally tested at FAME events, and this was a result of the judges flagging Coram for a drug test when they “saw her on stage and were told her body size had increased substantially over a short period,” according to a report in the Winnipeg Sun.

There are a few problems with this. First off, if the judges had any doubts concerning Coram, then why did they give her the championship? Secondly, it is not as if even one of the judges had an independent recollection of Coram’s physique and brought that into consideration. They were “told” by an unknown third party of the body changes and used that as the barometer to call for the testing.

It seems to be a moot point once the test was administered, but in retrospect, Coram may have been able to delay or even have the test cancelled without a valid reason to call for one.

With this behind us, the scrutiny may begin to be intertwined between figure, fitness and bodybuilders. In the past, the Ms. Olympia stage was filled with the type of builds that are in today’s figure and fitness competitions. Rachel McClish set the first standard, even starring in “Pumping Iron 2 -The Women.” Cory Everson started the trend where muscles and beauty were combined perfectly. Bev Francis then became the pioneer for ‘size matters’ for the women, and that has continued to this day.

Critics will say that if a fitness competitor is on steroids, three-fold, then the top tier female bodybuilders may be cycling as much as the men.
Photo credit: Steroid Nation