Ageless : He’s Balding, Wears Glasses, Dresses Like a Banker, Is 71--but Those Muscles Bulge!

Those who make a living at carnivals guessing people’s ages would have a real challenge in Francis Sequeira of Torrance.

On the one hand, there are the tell-tale signs of age: balding scalp, thick-rimmed glasses, extremely conservative wardrobe.

On the other, there is a muscular physique, an incredibly symmetrical body with a rippled stomach, perfectly shaped biceps and pectorals that would be the envy of most 20-year-olds.

It is a physique that has won him more than a dozen body-building titles from 1967 through 1987, and he’s not finished yet.

“I’m not bragging,” Sequeira, 71 years old and 5-foot-3 of solid muscle, said sitting in the living room of his home, “but I just don’t feel old. I don’t feel I’m old enough to retire. If my body cooperates, I’ll go on forever.”

His wife of 45 years, Maria, said Sequeira not only looks young, he acts it too:

“Sometimes when we’re out on the street and someone gives him trouble, he’ll get upset and say, ‘That old so and so,’ and I say, ‘Daddy, he’s probably a lot younger than you are.’ ”

Believe it or not, Sequeira is something right out of Charles Atlas lore. He wasn’t quite a 98-pound weakling, but during World War II, Sequeira was a fragile, 100-pound refugee, who fled from his native Hong Kong to Portuguese Macao. That’s where the 136-pound body-builder first started working with weights in 1942.

During the war, Sequeira and his wife moved to southeast China because Hong Kong was occupied by the Japanese. There he met a man who owned a gym and convinced him to try it out.

“We didn’t have much to eat,” Sequeira said, “and I was skin and bones. Really, I was more concerned with eating than exercising. But in a couple of months I got my job back with Standard Oil, and I was eating properly.”

He first competed in Hong Kong in 1950. Sequeira was the runner up in the Mr. Hong Kong body-building competition.

“He’s remarkable,” said Pete Samra, winner of the first Mr. Natural body-building contest in 1980 and former manager of the popular Gold’s Gym. “People are always amazed and he always gets standing ovations. Francis is just an inspiration to everyone.”

Sequeira is definitely from the old school when competitors worked endlessly for muscle definition but remained clean of growth aids.

The plethora of trophies, medals and plaques that sit in his living room were won in “natural” body-building competitions, where a polygraph and drug test is required of all entrants. Sequeira has never used steroids and at this point in his career has no intention to do so.

“I have no interest in them,” Sequeira said. “It’s just against my principle to take drugs. Steroids might make me better, but I know I can compete against the steroid boys and still win without using them.”

Sequeira, who will guest pose on Saturday in the Natural Southern California Bodybuilding Contest at Mark Twain Junior High in Venice, won the first title in his 38-year career in 1967 when he won the Pacific Coast Championship 40-and-over division in San Diego. Sequeira was 50 at the time.

In 1983, he won the Motor Rally competition at the Long Beach Convention Center and in 1984, he swept the Mr. All-American, which he also won in 1985, and Mr. Los Angeles events. In 1986, Sequeira was inducted into the American Bodybuilding Coordinating Committee hall of fame.

Last year, he won the Natural Mr. Los Angeles masters division, even though he was about 25 years older than most competitors.

“It’s not a big deal to compete against guys younger than me,” Sequeira said. “I’m sorry if I beat 40-year olds, but I just find that I want to compete.”

Sequeira also has won eight gold medals in the Senior Olympics. In 1982, he won the “most symmetrical body” award in the Senior Olympics at age 65. The event was open to men age 20 and over.

In 1956, the Sequeiras moved to the United States with their five children. Sequeira worked for Occidental Life Insurance and his wife was a legal secretary.

“The first three years here were tough,” Sequeira said. “I was trying to support a family and really didn’t have the money to join a gym, so I didn’t work out during that time.”

Instead he started a gym for company executives in a dark, empty room at the top of the downtown Los Angeles building where he worked. The gym still exists in the Occidental building on Hill Street in downtown Los Angeles.

“It was nothing fancy,” Sequeira said. “All our equipment was stuff that people donated. But when the president of the company found out, he was impressed and we shopped around for equipment.”

When Sequeira was finally able to afford a gym, he joined the Muscle Beach Club in Santa Monica.

“I was a very shy foreigner,” Sequeira said. “The first time I worked out, these two very big guys, who were showing off, were using the bar with 25 pounds on each side. When I was ready to use it, they said, ‘We’ll take some weight off for you.’ I said, ‘No, leave it the way it is.’ Well, I did 20 reps and they were only doing eight.

“There’s a lot of these conceited characters down there now at Gold’s Gym and all those places.”

So Sequeira stays away from those places. He does a 45-minute calisthenic routine in the morning at home and weight training at a modest gym in Redondo Beach for 2 1/2 hours a day.

“We call him ‘Maestro,’ ” said Tom Lentini, who has trained with Sequeira for two years. “At the gym, people always come up and ask him questions about dieting and training because there’s nothing he doesn’t know about the human body. He’s just excellent. He inspires us all.”

Perhaps the poster promoting Saturday’s body-building competition tells best the way Sequeira is seen by his peers.

It says, “Francis Sequeira, the 71-year old king of natural body-building,” under a photo of Sequeira flexing his biceps.

“You’re not over the hill when you reach 40 or 50,” Sequeira said. “In the olden days, when you were over 40, you had to take it easy cause, oh, you could get a heart attack or something. That’s rubbish.”

And he’s living proof of it.