Nasser El Sonbaty - The Night He Spent in a Mental Hospital
TBT 1997: Nasser El Sonbaty
The Night He Spent in a Mental Hospital
The travel travails of Nasser El Sonbaty, who passed away on March 20, 2013, were legendary; there were regularly snafus – not caused by him – in transporting his hulking frame around the planet. In short he was to travel what Charlie Sheen is to his psychiatrist, always too many kinks to iron out. In November 1997, two months after finishing runner-up to Dorian Yates at that year’s Mr. Olympia, the globetrotting Nasser flew to Kiev in the Ukraine for a guest appearance and for 24 hours felt like he had walked into a Franz Kafka storyline.
He was taken to a ‘hotel’ outside Kiev, which at first by its Spartan appearance told him he was not being booked into a Ritz Carlton, before realizing it was a sanatorium for people recovering from mental illness. The room he was given had no phone or hot water. He tried to leave but was told that the doors were all locked at 6 PM. For food, he was given sausage, bread and water at 7 PM, and told that there would be no more food until 9 AM the next morning. He lobbied the head nurse, who looked suspiciously like Louise Fletcher (the demonic Nurse Rached) from One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest, and asked her to call the promoter. She made several calls without eliciting a reply, until Nasser spotted that the phone she was using wasn't plugged in. He figured out that she told another attendant that he, Nasser, was “not a normal person.” Why anyone would think that the 310lb behemoth who requested that he be fed with chicken and rice every two hours because the next day he had to be in town all oiled to pose in his underwear wasn't normal is beyond comprehension.
NASSER FLIES OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST
Anyway, at dawn, Nasser found a faulty exit door, and before you could say “Neil Patrick Harris”, he was out. In a warning to Donald Trump and his Mexican border Every Brick in The Wall homage to Pink Floyd, he easily clambered over the wall that, like a pre-1953 Mount Everest, was not meant to be climbed. Fearful of being chased he made his way across fields (anyone remember Cary Grant in the Alfred Hitchcock thriller North by Northwest?) [Ed’s Note: Peter, Peter, Peter, all these ‘50s and ‘60s references are for your generation, younger readers won’t know what you’re talking about. Peter: Most of them never know what I’m talking about anyway.] Muddied from his field expedition he reached a road and flagged down a car that took him into town. So you’re in the middle of the Ukrainian countryside, you know nothing about bodybuilding, and suddenly a mud splattered 310 pound giant waving his arms bounds out of the bushes – would you give him a lift?)
Once in Kiev he met up with the promoter. Apologies were more abundant than bow ties in Louis Farrakhan’s wardrobe, and Nasser kept his temper: the last thing he wanted to say was, “I’m mad!” His main priority at that point was "Where's the nearest McDonald's?” Our latter-day Marco Polo never really found out how he had ended up at the sanatorium. And no, his then arch nemesis Flex Wheeler had absolutely nothing to do with making arrangements for bodybuilders visiting Ukraine.