Bodybuilding legend Reg Park has just been honoured by an Arnold Schwarzenegger Lifetime Achievement Award in the sport
Roshila Pillay
Reg Park is a lot of things. He’s from Yorkshire, lives in South Africa but, curiously, has an American accent. He is also a bodybuilding demigod, three-time Mr Universe winner, businessman and the man who inspired Arnold Schwarzenegger.
And, at the age of 73, he’s just won the Arnold Schwarzenegger Lifetime Achievement Award for his feats in the bodybuilding world.
The telephone rings twice during our interview, allowing for an interesting glimpse into Park’s telephone-speak (when I spoke to him on the phone he sounded Irish). “What’s the matter, baby?” is his most common retort which leads me to believe that besides having influenced the Schwarzenegger physique, Park might well have planted the vocal seeds for the line that became synonymous with Schwarzenegger (in Terminator): “Hasta la vista, baby”.
As an eight-year old, Park admired a painting of a Greek wedding which his grandparents had in their house. The painting depicted, in Park’s words, “a handsome man with a stunning physique marrying a beautiful woman”.
This sparked his fascination with the world of bodybuilding.
At school Park participated in swimming, athletics and soccer. He even played soccer for the Leeds United junior team.
At 18 he was forced into army service as a physical training instructor in Singapore training Malay, Chinese and Eurasian troops for their six-week basic training.
Park attended the first Mr Universe contest in London a few weeks after his return from Singapore.
John Grimek and Steve Reeves, a renowned bodybuilder/actor, competed for the title. “I was completely mesmerised.”
Park then went on to tell everyone he would win the competition one day. He began training in his parents’ backyard in September 1948. The Yorkshire winter necessitated army boots and three tracksuits to work out in the -5 temperatures.
Park then spent time getting his routine right. Right after being crowned Mr Great Britain in 1949, Park set off for New York to size up the competition. There he stayed with a Yale professor who also had another young gentleman staying with him.
“One day the professor asked us what we wanted to do. The other guy said he wanted to be a millionaire. I said I wanted to have the best physique in the world. About two years later I won the Mr Universe title. Just after I won it I received a telegram from the professor saying that the other guy had become a self-made millionaire,” recounts Park.
This is just a hint of the world according to Park, where “it’s all in the mind”.
In 1951 he won the Mr Universe contest, after training for three years and notching up the Mr Great Britain, Mr Europe and America’s Best Developed Athlete titles in the interim.
After winning Mr Universe, Park was offered a starring role in Hercules.
This led to six movie roles. Park is blas about his stint as an actor: “It was a good experience but I did not want to be an actor.”
In 1952 he began the Reg Park Journal, which capitalised on the Reg Park name, transforming it into a brandname for training courses, weights, posing trunks and T-shirts.
“After I won the title for the second time in 1958 I started a series of health studies and did exhibitions,” says Park.
What impresses me throughout the interview is Park’s singular self-confidence. Did he ever doubt himself, worry about what people might think, that his obsession with his physique might be construed as the worst expression of vanity and perhaps even downright frivolous? “No. I have never thought about that. Arrogance is ignorance. I’m just grateful for the quality of life I’ve experienced and the beautiful people who have come into my life.”
Park appears to subscribe to the self-taught school of faith in self and “knowing you’re going to achieve. If you don’t put a value on yourself, no one else is going to do it for you.”
Park gives me an example. “In 1965 a friend introduced me to a Austrian kid who admired me. The kid wanted me to bring him out to South Africa if he won the Mr Universe title.” That kid was Arnold Schwarzenegger and in 1966, 19-year-old Schwarzenegger won the Mr Universe title.
“His [Schwarzenegger’s] mother thought he was gay because he had pinups of me on his wall,” says Park. Park and Schwarzenegger then forged a firm friendship that lasts to this day despite the language barrier; Schwarzenegger barely spoke a word of English while Park knew no German.
“He wanted to be an actor despite his accent and the language barrier. And he did it,” says Park.
Asked about his own accent, Park says if he wanted to he could speak like a Leeds native. “I choose not to.” Several years in America left their indelible imprint on this Englishman.
But then Park would not be who he is if he remained true to his roots. His jumbled accent contributes to his enigma in the same way that his refusal to retire does; he now trains people in the art of bodybuilding and is busy writing his autobiography.
“I don’t want to retire. Retiring means not doing things and I want to do things.”