by John Anderson (The Times Herald) and Vic Richards

When a professional athlete has a problem with a team, they can ask for a trade or even switch leagues. And in many cases, if an athlete has a problem with their team, they can go to the players union to take care of matters.

Bodybuilders do not have that luxury.

And one bodybuilder who has seen this is Vic Richards.

Vic started lifting while a high school student, and got a major foot in the door when he trained with the famous Barbarian Brothers, David and Peter Paul.

Unfortunately, Vic's passion and love for the sport of bodybuilding is not as strong as it was when he was a teenager. Life lessons have shown how badly his fellow professionals are treated, and he is one of the few to get out before it's too late.

When someone suddenly drops from the scene, many fear the worse. But for Vic Richards, he has stayed in the limelight through his seminars, training, on-line coaching, and nutrition company.

But what sets Vic Richards apart is his silence. This is the first newspaper interview Richards has granted to break his silence about the ills of professional bodybuilding.

"The IFBB controls the athletes and controls the sport - as a result, the athletes are just objects and are not allowed to formulate their own opinions," said Richards. "People come to me and say they want to compete and I tell them 'it's your decision' and I tell them what to watch out for.

"It's almost like swimming with the sharks, you are not going to come out in one piece," Richards continued. "I will not suffer the same fate. Bodybuilders are not allowed freedom of expression and not allowed to speak their minds.

"Look at Charles Barkley, he can tell the NBA where to go and still play basketball. That is what this nation was built on, freedom of speech," Richards added.

As a teenager, Richards said at Gold's Gym, Venice ("The Mecca of Bodybuilding") he saw famous bodybuilders he looked up to abusing recreational drugs, living in their cars, killing themselves. He wondered how they could get national publicity yet still be penniless. Not just "wanna-be" competitors, but major titleholders.

"Over time as I watched these people, I noticed they had fallen into this condition because they had allowed themselves to be used and abused by the bodybuilding establishment. The only way they could mask the pain was through recreational drugs, cocaine, and alcohol. They look in the mirror and hate themselves for letting themselves get like this, but they don't do anything about it," Richards said.

"Consider some of the recent deaths or scandals of legendary bodybuilders like the Mentzer brothers, or Bertil Fox, or Momo Benaziza. Many bodybuilders worked hard for years, making names for themselves, playing by the restrictive and manipulative rules. They thought if they just did what was demanded of them, they'd get their pot of gold in the end. But they didn't. And discovering that truth made them bitter and angry. You have to be true to yourself, and even as a teenager, I saw winners chosen before a show.

"There's tremendous conflict of interest. Could you imagine if in a sport like boxing the owners, like Don King, also controlled the promoters and sanctioning bodies and judges? Would there be any doubt who would be declared winner?"

"This is why bodybuilding is not allowed in the Olympics. Bodybuilding had a chance to be an Olympic sport, but there was one problem - the Olympics wanted to conduct their own independent drug testing and the IFBB said they wanted to conduct the drug testing. The International Olympic Federation would not budge and bodybuilding never became a sport."

"Another way bodybuilding organizations protect their investment is by contracting bodybuilders who have low self esteem and who won't challenge authority. They do as they're told even if it benefits the promoters while damaging themselves. They're spineless. These aren't the kind of people who can represent bodybuilding in a positive light."

"The same people pushing products will black ball you from competitions if you promote a different product," Richards said. "Also, you have promoters of an event who are judges, and they ask competitors to pose for free. Many of these competitors also promote a product but guess who wins from this arrangement?

"Many of these people manipulating the sport don't respect it, or the athletes. They've never seen the inside of a gym. They don't know anything about bodybuilding except the profit they can squeeze out of it," Richards adds.