1999 NPC USA (Bodybuilding-Middleweight)
By -jabber



When this batch of nine women came out, I thought the -jabber had died and
gone to Heaven!  Why?  There were three mondo-muscular Oriental women in the
group, and guess what?  It was obvious that they'd be the top three.  Or
should've been (let the plot thicken).  

Those top three Oriental women were the out-of-the-stratosphere sexy and
VERY well-balanced Becky Rampey, my personal favorite, Dawn "Biceps" Riehl
(so sue me that I like her better than Becky), her arms were breathtaking,
I'd seen her at the '96 Nationals before her upper arms became so huge, and
the very well-defined Mah-Ann Mendoza.  It became clear that Ms. Mendoza was
the best of the three - perhaps the least well-known and least flamboyant
out of the three, her conditioning was heads-and-shoulders above anything
I'd seen at her previous shows.  I went to my nearest bookie and said, she'd
got this one - and SO deserves it.

Middleweight Women:

In 8th was Carla McDonough, in 7th was Beth Eisenman, in 6th was Marlene
Churchill-Wolverton, in 5th was Deborah Vorves.  In 4th was the one female
(outside of that phenomenal Oriental trio) that got my attention:  Karen
Aquilera.  A very attractive brunette, although she has implants, she has
tremendous pecs (size not striations), and she seemed very willing to show
the audience the tremendous gains she's made of late.  In previous shows,
she was relatively skinny (but defined), upperbodywise.  Hell, I was
impressed!

In 3rd was Kathie Canepa (never heard of her :-) ), and announced 2nd was
the beautiful (I rarely use that word to describe women) Becky Rampey.  Dawn
Riehl was announced first (my dissenting opinion (compared to the audience)
agreed with the judges for once).  Her upper back (taper), in addition to
those mega-meaty biceps, were world-class.

VERY, VERY conspicuous by her absence was Mah-Ann-Mendoza.  We all saw that
she didn't come out for the line-up in the evening.  More weird was the fact
that we just "knew" she was going to win.  After me asking about four
various folks that evening what had happened to Mah-Ann, I got nothing
resembling a real answer.  Now, if I saw Ms. Rampey, I have a feeling she
would've known (as I believe they are friends - I know Becky and Brenda
Raganot are friends - quite a pair indeed), but I didn't see her milling
around.  Finally I saw Kevin Wagner, who's quite big in Texas (and the
promoter of the Texas State held in the great city of Dallas this year, 8/21
- BE THERE! sorry for the promo).  I felt, he'll give me a real answer.

He said they were told she had car troubles, so she didn't show up in time
for the finals.  Kevin thought that sounded real weird.  At that time, I
glanced at the scoresheet (later posted by the considerate Bill Dobbins).
Amazing, Mah-Ann Mendoza got a clean sweep of 1st places!  And she was the
only class winner to do that.  Later, the next morning, a sheepish-looking
Mah-Ann Mendoza and Steve Wennerstrom were talking, and I didn't feel it was
right to ask her about that directly, other than me mumbling she came in
better than I'd seen her in the past, ever.

She probably felt bad enough already - an amazing turn of events, IMO.
Perhaps, my first thought, wasn't too far from the truth?  I said, maybe
Dawn Riehl tripped her. :-)  Or in this case, gave her four flat tires!  LOL
Just kidding - I have no knowledge of any wrongdoing on Ms. Riehl's part.

But ironically, if Ms. Mendoza was there for the overall, she had a GOOD
shot at it - especially since they botched the heavyweight class a bit (but
I'm getting ahead of myself)...