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Rachel McLish Bodybuilding Biography
Rachel McLish The first Ms Olympia
Raquel Livia Elizondo was from Spanish ancestry however later changed her name to Rachel Mclish, she was born on June 21, 1955 in Harlingen, Texas. Rachel made an enormous contribution to women’s bodybuilding and later got into writing books and acting after winning Ms. Olympia twice.She attended Pan American University after school where she started training on a regular basis to increase her upper body strength and started getting good results. The first ever Ms. Olympia was something that Rachel thought would be able to make a difference to the growing sport of bodybuilding for women.
She won that contest becoming the first Ms. Olympia which was in 1980 and later became a landmark moment on the calendar for women's bodybuilding. It was good timing on her behalf as women’s bodybuilding had just got the attention of all trendy mainstream media that included features on many popular television shows.
A year later at the 1981 Ms.Olympia Rachel McLish got a second place by losing to Finland's Kike Elomaa. The reason was clear to see as Rachel came on stage showing less definition than she had done the year before. Rachel has been featured on every magazine cover that has to do with health all over the world.
This continued for over 5 years and because she is so attractive she made a huge impact on the print and media industry that was pumping the unprecedented growth in the fitness industry at that time. She also got sponsored by Dynamics Health Equipment Manufacturing Corporation.
She was again defeated by Carla Dunlap in the 1983 Caesar's World Cup which was a competition that was specifically created for the making of the movie Pumping Iron II: The Women. But Rachel was not defeated by these losses and competed again in 1984 at the Ms.Olympia.
She was defeated again into second place in a very controversial decision by Cory Everson at the 1984 Ms. Olympia. The reason why it was considered so controversial at the time was that some competitors expressed great surprise that McLish's second place was unfair as she did not carry the muscle mass that many other competitors carried.
On the cover of the March 1985 Strength Training for Beauty's magazine was a story titled "Cory dethrones Rachel." It was the suggestion in the article that the bodybuilding judges where more interested in getting recognition of the sport than rewarding the well-built women showing more muscle than Rachel which started another controversy.
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