Held in the famous Messe Expo complex in Essen, Germany, this fantastic FITNESS & BODYBUILDING event took place from April 26th to 29th this year. It filled 9 massive halls spread over an area of 76,000 square metres. It is a success story stretching back over 16 years and we have the complete archive of footage from all of these years of FIBO. The list of physique stars who have appeared reads like a who's who of bodybuilding.

It is the largest Expo for fitness and bodybuilding in the world with over 450 companies exhibiting from USA to Europe to UK to Pakistan and to the Far East including Taiwan, China, Hong Kong and many more being too numerous to mention - in all 21 countries.

But FIBO means special things to GMV and our customers, namely lots of bodybuilding entertainment, posing shows, interviews, pumping and working out, spinning shows etc and star physique athletes from around the world, making this FIBO trade fair into the largest fun and bodybuilding action event in the world. Approximately 100,000 fans attended over the 4 days.

There were 2 large specially prepared stages for the bodybuilding shows. One was a brand new high-tech stage specially designed for FIBO 2001 and for the premiere of the Weider show called "THE BEST OF THE BEST". It starred 3 times Mr. Olympia Ronnie COLEMAN, a shredded Günter SCHLIERKAMP ready for the NOC, 4 times Ms Olympia and now a fitness star Kim CHIZEVSKY plus Ernie "Massive Arms" TAYLOR from UK. These athletes posed 3 times a day on both the Saturday and Sunday of FIBO after each taking a short questions and answers segment from the vast audience. We taped 5 of these 6 shows as each time it was a little different, or we used different angles for our 2 cameras, or the stars wore different outfits and so on. It was never boring and was the absolute highlight of the show and drew the largest crowds. I hope it will become an annual feature at FIBO.

Of special note, when Kim did her fitness routine she included some bodybuilding poses into the end of her performance. I know this was for her many BB fans in the crowd but it added a nice touch that I wish could be included into all fitness routines. After all, most of these women have great biceps.

After the individual posing there was a wild posedown each time with Günter in particular playing to his local fans, complete with hand shaking with some of the audience from the edge of the stage. Local bodybuilders were invited up on to the stage to pose down with these stars and this was a novel approach with some of the German guys absolutely dwarfed by these mass monsters, and by Ronnie in particular! Ronnie was in pretty good shape as it was only a few weeks ago that he won the Arnold Classic. He had not posed at FIBO for about 4 years so he was undoubtedly the star attraction. I complement Weider for taking this team of champions under the management of Lynn Conkwright to help make this probably the best FIBO I have ever attended.

Also guest posing on the Weider stage was the ripped and brilliant young German amateur champion, Bernhard KÜNZE.

The second main stage was in the next hall being the ALLSTARS stage. It was organised by our old friend Stephan Korte (who was a tremendous help to me) and featured many more IFBB champions plus a little powerlifting such as the Bench Press Challenge (which we taped), organised by Thomas Klose, and other fitness entertainment. GMV, together with Thomas, also laid cabling for our cameras under this stage on the day before FIBO, as we do each year, so that we can just rush from place to place in this vast complex and lock onto our cables in seconds before we are surrounded by a great mass of screaming fans.

But the down side which seems funny now was second cameraman Sean Gallasch and I scrabbling around under the stage at 5pm on Sunday evening to retrieve our cables, in the darkness, our ear drums bursting from the huge loud speakers just metres away while the final aerobics display was taking place above us! The reason for the rush - Clive and I had a flight to catch back to UK just 90 minutes later with lots of video equipment yet to be "thrown" into suit cases as we packed on the floor of FIBO! Not an experience I would wish to repeat in a hurry. I left Sean behind to retrieve the 50 metre cables we had in place up to the Uncle Sam platform where we do much of our show taping, overlooking the Weider stage! This is just to give you a bit of an idea what goes on behind the scenes to produce these videos that just keep appearing as if by magic on our site each year. Clive Jaques is of course our interviewer and photographer, so watch for the wonderful PHOTOS up on the site in the GALLERY section some time next week when I return to Australia.

I must also thank Willy of SVH Videos Germany for assistance in all areas and Dennis Schaeffer for arranging star interviews and photos, and oiling up Ronnie and Günter on camera for us and much more. Also thanks to Lynn Conkwright for helping to arrange interviews with Anja LANGER and Lena JOHANNESEN and all the previously named Weider stars mentioned above.

The stars we taped posing on the ALLSTARS stage included humungous Francisco "Paco" BAUTISTA, Johannes ELEFTHERIADIS (2001 NOC competitor), Jay CUTLER, Tommi THORVILDSEN, Robert KASTNER, Junior Mr. Europe Tomm VOSS, Hamdullah AYKUTLUG, Steven "Siggi" SEGERS, Franco MAZZOTTA and Serkan CETIN who is a Junior star from Turkey.

The women included Susanne NIEDERHAUSER, Dawn SUTHERLAND, Gabriela SCHEU, Fedora MARZOLI and Sherry LEE.

THE OTHER BIG NEWS IS THAT THE IFBB GERMAN GP IS SAID TO BE RETURNING IN 2002.

Next we taped on the UNIVERSAL stage where the MC was Monica BRANT. She also did a routine and demonstrated various fitness moves with the star males bodybuilders trying to follow her. This was hilarious. Stars included Joe DeANGELIS, Hubert MORANDELL, Giovanni THOMPSON, Alan BILEGUE, Manuel PETRYKOWSKI, Thomas DEVANT, Christian EICKHOLZ and the beautiful Suzy MJK.

Other stars we worked with included Francis BENFATTO, Jose Botet F. CHAPPOTIN, and the women included Mandy BLANK, Sylvie ESMENJAUD, Heide ROGGENTIN, and Kristen ADELMANN.

We also shot short workout sequences, back stage pump room segments or both with many of these stars including the most popular guy from last year's FIBO, FRANCISCO "PACO" BAUTISTA!!!!!!!!! He was in sensational condition and made the huge legs of Jay Cutler look small. I have not seen so much quality muscle packed onto this size frame before. His massive arms, pecs and deltoids have a most unusual tie-in as you will see from the photos next week. We shot a lot of footage at ALLSTARS from on stage as well as in front of the stage, plus lots in their pump room. It was a real bonanza with 2 cameras burning up the tape. (Total footage shot at FIBO from the 2 cameras was 15 hours).

We also spoke to the following stars who were not guest posing this year, Vince Taylor, Mario Rieger (watch for a video we will put together showing all his famous routines), Thomas Scheu, Mat Duvall who did an interview for us, Markus Rühl, Sabine Froschauer, Andrulla Blanchette, Nasser El Sonbaty, Shawn Ray, Shaun Davis, Mike Christian and Armin Scholz.

I also caught up with old friends Tom Lincir of IVANKO who supplied the weights for the power lifting, Benno Dahmen of Sport & Fitness who I first met at the Mr Europe in Essen 31 years ago, Frank Lethen of Uncle Sam Sportswear, and Matt and Wolfgang of MUSCLETIME.COM. You should check out their wonderful site full of photos and reports at wwwmuscletime.com. I strongly recommend you take out a subscription with these guys who work with famous photographer RAY CASSAR.

Thanks again to my whole team which included Tina back at GMV in Australia providing moral support and keeping things going on the home front. It was the first FIBO she has missed attending but the Olympia trip will be a good trade-off.

This year for the first time ever we will produce 2 separate FIBO videos. The first will be called MONSTROUS MEN AT FIBO 2001 followed by WONDERFUL WOMEN AT FIBO 2001. Probably about 90 minutes for the men and 60 minutes for the women. As soon as the editing is finished from the Australian GP we will start on FIBO so we are looking for a release date of around the first week of June for the men. After FIBO we have still to edit the EFBB British National Championships from last year and my LEGENDS REUNION from World Gym, so we won't be running out of work! Other surprises are in the pipe-line.