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The Romano Factor

John Romano
John Romano’s name is synonymous with “no bull-crap,” “candid,” and “hardcore.” He’s worked tirelessly to build up an ironclad reputation in the fitness industry through his work as senior editor of Muscular Development magazine and co-founder of Rx Muscle (see also: Heavy Muscle Radio and Muscle Girls Inc.). He’s been consulted as a steroid expert on HBO, ESPN, and ABC’s 20/20, as well as the movie Bigger, Stronger, Faster. Most recently, John worked as director of Internet media at VPX (and host of Shotgun Radio). In his spare time, he is a contributing author for countless blogs, magazines, and articles, including authoring the Muscle Meals cookbook.
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What does Top 5 really mean

Last Monday morning, after a weekend of many competitions, I sat, sipping coffee and reading Facebook posts from people—“friends”—who had competed over the weekend and were reporting on how they did. Bear in mind, I’m maxed out at 5,000 friends—most of them competitors—so my news feed is rather full of this stuff. I wasn’t too far into it before I started noticing a trend.

“I got top five” was something I had probably already read six times. There were posts about winning, taking third, fourth, eighth, but nothing quite stood out to me as much as “I got top five.”

“Top five?” You mean you got fifth. No one takes second and says they got top five, or even top three for that matter. If you got fourth, would you still say “top five?” Come on, seriously? You got fifth; what’s this “top five” crap?

Granted, placing in the top five will most likely qualify you for a higher level show, but that’s not how you placed. “Top five” is not a placing. A placing is a positive numerical value, not a phrase predicated upon some possible future event. Surely, we’re all smart enough to know that. So, what’s really being said when fifth is relegated to “top five?” The same goes for 10th being “top ten” and third being “top three”; the latter is almost nonexistent in the bodybuilding lexicon, but it still happens.

It irks me to think that some of my iron brothers and sisters are so insecure that they can’t fess up their placing, but rather excuse it in favour of the least part—qualifying. Here’s a news flash for you: Anyone who knows you well enough to be “friends” with you on Facebook—and knows you’re a bodybuilder, figure, bikini, physique, or a board short–wearing floating torso—knows that the top five qualify for the next level show. You don’t have to soften the blow for us. You’re doing that for you.

We also all know that you didn’t enter the show to do anything worse than win. I’ll agree that there are competitors out there who enter a show intent on being satisfied with just qualifying, but I don’t know, call me old school, but I believe that if you’re getting ready for a show, you’re doing it with the belief that anything other than first is last. The likely disadvantageous part is that even if you’ve done your job 110 percent, your victory is predicated upon the opinions of others.

In a purely objective sport, its concept is easy to live with; you play at 110 percent and score X number of points in a manner palpably discernible via a tangible means, e.g., home run, goal, hoop, crossing a finish line, etc. The points you get for doing that, or a sum total of your points and the points of the rest of your teammates, indicates who won—the definably and inarguably highest scoring athlete/team that day. Cut and dry.

In our beloved subjective sport, however, the top five—the top ten, for that matter—is a gray area. Any number of things could take the judges’ attention off your striated lower back and diamond calves and undeservedly lower you a place or two. The point is, no matter good you are or how hard you worked, any number of uncontrollable factors can override your presence and move you away from your intended slot—first—which is statistically the most likely thing to happen.

I’ve seen many competitions over the last 35 years where the guy who took fifth could have—or should have—taken first (the 1980 Mr. Olympia comes quickly to mind). There is an ever-growing number of top-level shows these days where the top five could be shuffled around any number of ways and no one could really argue.

That being the logical case, “fifth” isn’t “I got top five.” It’s just fifth—lower than fourth but higher than sixth, and, yeah, you qualified. It’s nothing to be reserved about, especially in a subjective sport. As long as there were more than five competitors in the class, fifth is a victory, particularly in a deep class; some of these figure classes outnumber the secretarial pool at Cushman & Wakefield. Figure class D of the 2014 Team Universe had 27 competitors! How could fifth be anything less than commendable?

To read more about what the judges are looking for when it comes to shows, click here!