Written by Peter McGough
26 March 2015

15dorianyates-hurrah

Dorian Yates: The Last Hurrah!

His Traumatic Finale at the 1997 Olympia

 

 

Dorian Yates won his first Sandow in 1992 and his sixth in 1997. In the months before his 1997 triumph no one, not even the six-time Sandow winner, knew it would be his final flexing appearance. Here’s the background to The Shadow’s competitive finale.

That's Torn It

The 1997 Mr. Olympia contest was scheduled for September 19th and 20th at the Terrace Theater in Long Beach, California. At 6.00pm on Sunday August 31, three weeks prior to the Olympia, the phone rang in my Santa Monica home. My wife, Anne, answered and told me Dorian Yates was calling. It was 2.00am Monday in the UK, and I instantly thought this is not good news.

 Dorian quickly told me he had been doing a pullover and press movement for triceps in his morning workout at his Temple Gym in Birmingham, when during the pullover part of the movement he felt, “Something go bang in my left shoulder.” This sensation was followed by the most excruciating pain. He knew straight away the triceps had been torn. He recalled that it was much more painful than when he tore his left biceps nine weeks prior to the 94 Mr. Olympia.

 He continued, “It was so painful, I think I went into shock because it was as if, after the initial agony, I couldn't feel anything. I thought. That's it, no Olympia. Everything I've done this year has been for nothing it's over.”

 I gave him words of wait-and-see encouragement, but it is the lowest I’ve ever heard him.

 Within 36 hours his whole upper arm swelled up, the triceps was totally distorted and his arm was bruised right down to the wrist. Weeks later he told me, “It was the only time in my life I've thought, I can't fight this! Every time something had happened to me, I think, why me? I feel like somebody's testing me to see whether I'm worthy or not.”

 THE SHADOW FIGHTS BACK

By Tuesday, September 2, his mind began to fight back. He thought, “Even though my training from here on in is going to be all screwed up, I was in shape, I knew I could do it. I adopted the same attitude I had with the biceps tear: don't dare give up until it's absolutely clear you can't compete. Otherwise, you will spend the rest of your life thinking, could I have done it?”

 The main worry for the then 35 year old was the uncertainty: Would the swelling and bruising disperse before the Olympia? And even if it did go down, what would the triceps look like? He was prepared to go through all the discomfort and suspense. But he had no guarantee that it wouldn't all be in vain.

 In those last three weeks he couldn’t do any pressing movements, and even with most pulling movements he had to train very carefully with light weights. For chest, all he could do was pec-deck; for delts, just lateral raises. The only body part he could train properly was legs. Looking back he reflects, “You don't realize how much you use the triceps as a stabilizing or supporting muscle until you damage it. Even gripping with my left hand was difficult.”

 He didn't practice the mandatories or his free posing routine for those three weeks because even flexing the left triceps caused inflammation of the elbow. He just nursed the left triceps and was scared to death that he would damage it via any stress.

 He couldn't get an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) in England, and it wasn't until September 10, when he stopped over in New York on his way to Long Beach that he had an MRI done on the damaged triceps. He was told there he would have to wait a week to the results.

 On Friday, September 12, seven days before the Olympia, he arrived in California. The next day my wife, Anne, and I visited him at the Residence Inn, Costa Mesa. Also there was Dorian’s then wife Debbie and close friend Steve Weinberger. We were the only ones, plus Steve’s wife Bev Francis and Stuart Cosgrove, Dorian’s physiotherapist back in the UK, who knew of the injury. It would be kept under wraps until after the Olympia.

 Dorian showed us the arm. The swelling had disappeared and the muscular configuration of the triceps appeared normal. But the bruising, which was every color of the rainbow and then some, was still there, but false tan would mask it. He was thankful that at last he knew he could compete without the injury standing out like a red flag.

 HANGING BY A THREAD

Since tearing the triceps, he had lived with constant uncertainty – the fear that it would suddenly break down again and swell up. He went for a shower and then we heard him cry out in pain. He was drying himself after a shower when a searing pain shot through his left triceps. He thought, “No, please not now!” He immediately applied an ice pack and after a few hours it was clear it wasn't going to swell up again. He admitted he was now almost paranoid about anything involving the triceps. The incident reinforced the need to desist from practicing his posing. He had to save everything for the day.

 On Tuesday, September 16, he got the results of the MRI and it was bad news. The triceps tendon was torn three quarters of the way off the bone, so it was attached to the bone along only a quarter of its length. His triceps and Olympia hopes were literally hanging by a thread.

 That year’s Olympia was held over two days: Prejudging on Friday, September 19 and the Finals a day later. Throughout the prejudging, his thoughts were consumed by the triceps. Particularly he feared the effects of any clashing elbow interaction, which would send agony searing through his triceps. From a 17-year perspective he says, “Constantly, I told myself, Be very very, careful when you hit a pose. Don't squeeze hard with that left arm. Normally during a pre-judging, I'm thinking, Yeah! Let's get down to business. This time, I was thinking, I hope to hell they don't call me again. I'd rather just stay back here. Once the prejudging was over, I felt a wave of relief because all I would have to endure on Saturday night was my three-minute posing routine and the posedown, not a two-hour prejudging.”

 THE ULTIMATE WARRIOR

The next night as he clutched his sixth Sandow and stood onstage with Joe Weider none of the 2,500 crowd knew of the injury. Neither did they know that they had witnessed the supreme blood-and-guts performance by a man whose spirit and soul refused to wilt in the face of the most intense pressure. He stood before them as the sport’s ultimate warrior. He also stood before them for the last time.

 Postscript: The damaged triceps was operated on in New York on October 28, 1997, but healing and strength gains were slower than expected. By the summer of 1998 he still couldn’t train with 100% capacity. He felt he needed more time, so withdrew from defending his title at the 1998 event and would aim to return in 1999. The comeback was not to be. In mid-September just a month before the 1998 Olympia, being staged in New York’s Madison Square Garden, he realized he would never regain full power in the left triceps. At the start of the evening Olympia finals, dressed in a dark suit, Dorian duly told the Madison Square throng that they would never see him compete again. The realization of what he was saying drew a collective gasp from the 5,000 attendees and he left the stage to deafening applause. Since that time he has maintained and extended a fantastic fan base and is respected as the thinking man’s bodybuilder. And even though it is over 17 years since he last competed he was recently on the cover of the February 2015 issue of Muscular Development. That only happens to a legend, which Dorian Yates truly is.

 

INTENSITY OR INSANITY?

 By Dorian Yates

I was really pleased with the physique I presented at the 1997 Olympia. The tribulations of the final weeks confirmed how important the off-season is. That's when you make all your gains. I proved that having 14 years of intensity workouts in my training log built a density of muscle that was not going to disappear overnight. I got away with doing a fraction of the work I planned to do in the last few weeks and still came in bigger and just as hard. This contest wasn't easy for me in a psychological sense. Throughout the countdown, I was thinking, You'll be competing against the best in the world and you're not training flat out.

 A lot of people will say that my experiences prove that I train too heavy, too hard and that maybe I’m crazy. I say I train intelligently, but I also train with a passion; so I'm constantly walking a fine line as I explore the limits of my capabilities. I didn't take the view that I didn't need to improve, that I was good enough to keep winning the Olympia, so why risk injury? Maybe that was the smart way to do it, but for me that approach lacks passion. If I’m going do the Olympia, I’ve got to give it of my best in the gym to be at my best on stage. That means pushing myself to the limit. If you don't overstep your limit, how do you know what your limit is?

 

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READ MORE OF PETER'S ARTICLES IN THE MCGOUGH REPORT

THE WAITING GAME: DORIAN YATES' CONTEST PREP STRATEGY

DORIAN & MENTZER: WAS IT A PUPIL-MENTOR RELATIONSHIP?