ARNIE IN MZANSI
Want to get ahead? Work your butt off!
ARNOLD Schwarzenegger’s eyes narrow, triggering visions of The Terminator. I’ve just asked him a question he doesn’t want: “What are your thoughts on Donald Trump?” The former California governor, a mainstream Republican, stormed out of a recent interview in Australia when the same question was posed.
He doesn’t do it again. He’s in a good mood today. But his answer bulges with irritation.
“When it comes to Donald Trump, first of all, I have not thought about it. My candidate that I endorsed was John Kasich. And I don’t want to make, while I am here promoting fitness, any news, one way or the other, about the whole thing. So I’m not going to get into it. OK?”
OK. Of course. Absolutely fine.
Schwarzenegger shares much with his screen persona, notably his accent and a primordial confidence that he stores in his biceps. But he’s way smarter than your average cyborg. Successful two-term governors of California can’t be barbarians.
He’s in Johannesburg to advance his global “fitness crusade” by launching the Arnold Classic Africa at the Sandton Convention Centre — an offshoot of the massively successful Arnold Classic fitness festival, first held 40 years ago in Columbus, Ohio.
Hosting 48 sports and about 10 000 participants, the Johannesburg event is another rep in his campaign to give the world better abs and self-esteem. Bodybuilding and strongman events top the bill, but the festival also features incongruously girly-man sports, from badminton to chess and pool. “We don’t only celebrate those who win — we celebrate anyone that participates.” The Austrian-American first came here in 1967, to be mentored in bodybuilding by his boyhood idol, Reg Park, the Yorkshireman who settled in Pretoria after playing Hercules in a clutch of sword-and-sandal B-movies. Schwarzenegger returned to Pretoria in 1975, as a bodybuilding legend, to win the Mr Olympia title for the fifth and last time, in a contest immortalised in George Butler’s documentary Pumping Iron. Arnie’s rival was Lou Ferrigno, a partially deaf Brooklynite, whose hapless lack of charisma contrasted with Arnie’s wisecracking bravado. “It was very important to show the personalities,” says Schwarzenegger. “One was the heavy [Ferrigno], one was the hero [me], and all the typical stuff. And it was a very important stepping stone in my career, because it showed the movie studios the range that I had — from being funny, to being intense to being angry.”
He had already starred in two minor films — Hercules in New York and Stay Hungry — but the doccie opened the way to Conan the Barbarian and stardom.
Schwarzenegger is adamant that the Mr Olympia contest did not endorse apartheid, because the organisers insisted on a multiracial event.
“I think the minister of sport, Piet Koornhof, was very openminded. He was actually the one who sent me to the townships and said: ‘Whenever you do something here, make sure you do something for whites but also do something for blacks.’ It was important that we had the opportunity to make the government agree that we wouldn’t abide by the laws of apartheid.”
He says he misses politics, and his fitness campaign has a political dimension. Obesity is as big a problem as ever in the US, despite the mainstreaming of gym culture. “You always fight the other side — the food companies, the soft-drink companies. They will keep promoting, and putting hundreds of millions of dollars into that. It’s the same with green energy — you’re always up against oil companies and coal companies. So it’s a continuous struggle, but it’s a great struggle.”
In 2011, Schwarzenegger was divorced from Maria Shriver after it emerged that he had fathered a son by the family’s nanny, Mildred Baena. He took full responsibility for his infidelity, and he clearly cares about public opinion, as evidenced by his reluctance to attack or support Trump.
He offers some advice: “Work your ass off . . . You sleep six hours, there’s 18 hours left to do what you want to do in life. A lot of people think they need more than six hours. Just sleep faster.”