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Good as Gold: touching base with bodybuilding legend Joe Gold
Flex, March, 2002 by Greg Merritt
CRUISE By 1975, weight training was reaching the mainstream, due in no small part to the then recently published book Pumping Iron (that preceded the movie version by two years), which featured the gym Joe Gold had sold, as well as its most famous member, Arnold Schwarzenegger. Gold resolved to open another gym and began constructing the facilities and equipment in Santa Monica. Having sold the rights to Gold's Gym, he named his new workout space World Gym. It opened in 1977.
Joe Gold's name is associated with bodybuilding worldwide, but he is no fan of today's professional sport. "I think it's grotesque," he asserts with typical bluntness. "I think they took it beyond a step beyond. They've lost the fact that bodybuilding is supposed to be health-oriented and the body should be symmetrical. When they get a 50-inch waist and a gorilla butt, it's ugly looking--and I think bodybuilding has become ugly looking."
Harsh comments, but Joe Gold is distressed by the image of bodybuilding because he loves the lifestyle. He still preaches the transformative power of pumping iron. He still treasures the camaraderie of the gym. And he still goes to work at the front desk of Marina del Rey's World Gym each morning, even though he's now 80 and in a wheelchair--a lingering result of the war wound he suffered nearly 60 years ago.
"I've been very lucky in my life," Gold declares with a twinkle in his eyes. "Everybody thinks that I did this and I did that, but I just went along with the times. I was very fortunate to live in this time when bodybuilding was embraced by Hollywood, embraced by doctors, embraced by the world." Much of the credit goes to Joe Gold, but if you tell him that, don't be surprised to receive a good-natured but salty insult in return. It's his way of saying welcome to the club.
COPYRIGHT 2002 Weider Publications
COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group
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