In the West, it is believed that bodybuilding first came to prominence between 1880 and 1930, when it was promoted by the man who is now often dubbed ‘The Father of Modern Bodybuilding’, Eugen Sandow.
Indeed, it was Sandow who organized what is generally accepted to be the first ever bodybuilding competition, which he (with commendable understatement) called ‘The Great Competition’. This took place at the Royal Albert Hall in London on September 14, 1901, with one of the judges being Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, the writer of the world-famous Sherlock Holmes novels.
Although Sandow did not win the competition, the man who did was presented with a bronze statue of Sandow as his first prize, which is interestingly still given out to the winner of the most prestigious professional bodybuilding competition, Mr. Olympia to this day.
From the 1970s onwards, professional bodybuilding began to be far more organized than previously, with many new organizations such as the International Federation of Bodybuilders (IFBB), and later the National Physique Committee, which according to many is the most successful professional bodybuilding organization in the USA and also acts as the amateur division of the IFBB.
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