Former Model Pumped Up About Ms. Olympia Title Bid

One of these days, Yolanda Heying will be Ms. Olympia, the top professional female body builder in the world, and the agony of pumping iron to get there will be worth the effort.

That’s her dream.

In the meantime, the former high fashion model will continue to spend 2 1/2 hours a day, six days a week, lifting weights at the San Clemente Gym to further develop her athletic body, already fine-tuned by 10 years of gymnastic competition in Tennessee.

She stands 5 feet 6 1/2 inches, weighs 141 pounds, has a 25-inch waist and recently won the heavyweight class at the 11th Annual Orange County Classic, an important amateur body building competition in California.

“I was a rambunctious young girl who broke up furniture, and my grandmother suggested I use my energy in a better way,” Heying said. “Actually, it was more like an order.”

It was gymnastics, said Heying, 24, of San Clemente, that steered her toward body building, then a second place in her first competition.

“I developed a good muscular body with broad shoulders in gymnastics and only trained for one month for that first body building contest,” she said. “That showed me I could do it, and fast. I really liked it.”

But she feels that it may be addictive. “Sometimes I go to the gym on the day I don’t work out and do it anyway,” she said. “It gives me a high, and I love it.”

And besides the joy of posing on stage during competitions, she also found herself in another spotlight.

“I suddenly became a role model to other women,” she said. “They started asking me questions about how they could make their body look better and about the kind of diet I was on.”

Heying, who competes under her married name of Hughes--”No one knows how to pronounce Heying,” she said--would like to see more black women compete in body building contests. “There are a lot of black guys in body building but not many black women.

“I don’t know what they’re (black women) afraid of,” Heying said. “Maybe they don’t care or don’t want to dedicate themselves because it’s a tough grind, but there’s no problem in the sport. Everyone has a chance.”

In fact, she said, the oiled muscles of people with dark skin have better definition under the lights in competition. “That’s why you see so many lighter complexioned contestants with deep tans,” she said.

Heying teaches gymnastic classes at the South Coast YMCA in Laguna Niguel to help pay for her training but also has help from sponsors Ken Norton, former heavyweight boxing champion, and Capistrano Beach chiropractor Mike Shalhoub.

Can you imagine 100 people sliding into 575 gallons of strawberry gelatin and charging spectators $2 to watch?

It’s an innovative money-raiser by the Orange County chapter of the Leukemia Society of America.

And mind you, those foolhardy souls who slide into the gelatin June 23 at the Inn at the Park in Anaheim first have to raise $100 in donations.

At least they’ll get a clean Gelatin Slide T-shirt.

A torch run like the one for the 1984 Olympics in Los Angeles will be duplicated in South Korea for the 1988 Olympics, and one of those runners will be Korean-born Choong Hee Rhee, a civil engineer from Huntington Beach.

“When I got the letter from the Olympic committee in Korea telling me I was one of 17 selected from the United States to carry the torch, I was beside myself with happiness,” Rhee said. “It’s a great feeling, and I’m excited.”

Rhee’s selection is the culmination of four years of letter writing. “I think the fact (that) I’m a runner and have a good educational background helped in the selection,” he said. Rhee, who runs marathons and 10-kilometer races, has both a master’s and doctorate degree in civil engineering from the University of Southern California.

“But I don’t think many people will see me run with the torch,” he said. His assigned mile run will be through a small village starting at 4:40 p.m. Sept. 13.

The opening ceremony is Sept. 17.

For most of his life, Richard Hsu, 43, of Anaheim would keep up with the life of his sister, Ding-Ding Hsu, 40, through letters to relatives in China.

And for the past eight years, there had been a concerted effort to bring her to the United States.

“It was a very emotional reunion,” he said after meeting his sister this month for the first time in nearly 40 years.

“I pictured her to be a small girl, but she’s a very strong, grown person,” he said.