Gladiator for a Day
Blaze and Storm are shakin in their boots...
By Suzanne Schlosberg
A federal agent with bulging biceps. An ex-Marine sergeant who squats 400 pounds. A gasoline truck driver who finds bungee jumping dull.
They were big, they were tough, they were determined-and they were my opponents, three of the 500 women with whom I was vying to a contender on TV’s "American Gladiators."
Before
the tryouts began, I had my doubts. After all, I’m just a writer,
a fit but docile soul who battles clichés, not criminals or
enemy soldiers. But I wanted to give it a shot. What shame would there
be in losing to women who could bench press my Honda?
The scene unfolded on a movie-studio lot in Los Angeles, one of five cities where contender tryouts took place. Producers from the show were scouring the country for 16 women and 16 men worthy of challenging the Gladiators for the upcoming season. In L.A. alone, 800 men and 500 women showed up.
The tryouts are nothing like the show itself. On TV, the contenders and Gladiators battle it out in a series of flashy games, swatting each other with giant Q-Tips, scaling 30-foot walls and rolling around in spherical cages. The tryouts, on the other hand, consist of basic tests for strength, speed and agility.
I arrived a bit tense and opted for some friendly chat with my opponents. Surely they were as anxious and unprepared as I was. I introduced myself to a woman who mentioned that she’d recently given birth.
"So have you been training for this?" I asked.
"No time," she said. "I’ve just been doing my basic routine-300 sit-ups a day, 50 pull-ups. My forklift at home raises up to 20 feet, so I hung a rope from it to do some climbing."
The tryouts began with chin-ups. I had to struggle to reach seven, the minimum for women. (Men had to do 24.) Some women did more than 20. Still, I was pleased. I’d made the cut. Most women hadn’t.
After I made the cut in the 40-yard dash by .1 second, an official waved me on to the rope climb.
"Use your feet," urged my boyfriend, Keith, who’d come along for encouragement. That sounded like a good strategy since my arm muscles were shot from the chin-ups. The official blew the whistle and the guy on the rope next to me flew right up like Spiderman. But I got all tangled up in the rope and went nowhere. After nine seconds, the whistle blew again, and I’d been official eliminated.
Unofficially, however, I was still a contestant (one of those media perks). My performances wouldn’t count, but I still had something to prove. So I promoted myself to the big show: powerball, sort of a cross between one-on-one basketball and Greco-Roman wrestling. On the sidelines of the court, I met a short, slight woman who was jumping up and down.
"I did it! I did it!" she exclaimed. "I made it to powerball! This is the coolest!"
She introduced herself as Linda Cohn, a 40-year-old dental hygienist from Northridge, California, mother of two boys and member of her PTA board. Linda said she just knew she could pass all the tests, but apparently no one else had any faith in her. Even the officials weren’t taking her seriously, Linda said. "They kept saying, ‘If you’re not competing, please move out of the way.’ "
I could see why. Everyone else was wearing lycra shorts and tank tops with their muscles bulging out. Linda-5-foot-3 and 118 pounds-was dressed in baggy red shorts and a loose-fitting red and white striped T-shirt. She looked like she’d just driven a carpool to Little League practice.
Linda
sized up the handful of women who’d graduated to powerball and
chose me as her opponent. She pointed to the muscular women around
us and said, "You’re my only hope."
I was insulted. What did I look like, Bambi? So what if I’d failed at the rope climb? I was 5-foot-7 and 150 pounds. Surely I’d have the upper hand in powerball. I was tough. I was rugged. I was ready.
However, I couldn’t seem to hook the chin strap to my helmet. "Here, Suzanne, let me help," Linda said. This was embarrassing. I don’t think Joe Frazier ever said, "Here, Mohammed, let me help you on with your gloves."
Linda stuck a piece of plastic in her mouth, and I started to get concerned. "You’re wearing a mouthpiece?" I asked.
"I’m a hygienist," she said, as if that somehow explained it.
I don’t recall much of our 30-second battle, with Linda on offense and me, ostensibly, on defense. I believe she scored five goals. Keith said he’d stopped counting.
The scrimmage left me gasping for breath, although Keith didn’t understand why. "You were like a buoy-something to go around," he said.
"On second thought," he added, "buoys move. You were more like a fire hydrant."
Because of some screw-up, I didn’t get to play offense against Linda, and ended up playing both offense and defense against a truck driver named Veronica, who had driven 1,300 miles from Portland, Oregon, just for this competition. Before the game, I tried to distract Veronica with some friendly conversation.
"Hi!" I said. "What sports do you play?"
"Contact sports," she replied.
"Oh! Which ones?"
"All of them."
Then the whistle blew, and I was thrown back onto the court. On defense, I seemed to spontaneously fall whenever Veronica came within five feet of me. When we switched sides, I managed to score one goal-a triumph I was determined to savor.
"I scored! I scored!" I shouted to Keith. "I stayed with her the whole time. I stayed right with her."
"You were on offense," Keith pointed out. "She was supposed to stay withyou."
I wasn’t dejected about my performance, but some people were taking this tryout business a whole lot more seriously. (And why not? Winners can take home $35,000 in cash and prizes.)
Sally McNeil, a 32-year-old Marine wearing a purple sequined bodysuit, was fuming. A 5-foot-3, 150-pound powerlifter who bench presses 225 pounds, Sally had eased her way through the tests (she did 17 chin-ups) and had dominated in Powerball. But apparently she lacked something the producers sought and didn’t get tapped for an interview, the next step toward contenderhood. Furious, she re-registered for the tryout, this time claiming to be 5-foot-5 and 140 pounds. Again she flew through the process (20 chin-ups this time). Again she was passed over.
Sally had an idea why. "I was too tough," she said. "They don’t want someone to hurt the Gladiators."
Actually, Sally’s goal was to be a Gladiator. "That would be the pinnacle," she said. "That’s what the Romans were. They fought to the death."
Linda, meanwhile, had been summoned for an interview, where she was asked if she could get off work to tape the show. "I told the guy I could beat up my boss," she said. "He’s a dentist. He’s very thin."
Linda went home on an incredible high. Sally went home seething. I went home weary and sore and thankful that I was never, ever going to go anywhere near the Gladiators.
(Shape, 1993)