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By The Daily Gleaner

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For the fourth consecutive year, bodybuilding and figure athletes from across the province will gather at the Playhouse to compete for top honours in their respective classes at the New Brunswick Bodybuilding & Figure Championships.

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Saturday's competition begins with the prejudging at 10 in the morning, with the evening finals beginning at 6 p.m.

Garry Bartlett, president of the New Brunswick Physique & Figure Association, is "extremely pleased" at the support and participation shown by local competitors, especially from Base Gagetown.

"This will be the 36th year for our provincial championships and this competition is one of the longest running bodybuilding and figure shows in Atlantic Canada," Bartlett said. "The first N.B. provincials was held in Edmundston back in 1973 with less than a dozen competitors.

"Last year over 60 athletes flexed and strutted their stuff to a sold-out audience. I'm really pleased to see the participation from our military at this year's championships, with over 10 athletes competing."

In his efforts to grow the sport, Bartlett has added for the first time a figure model search category, which has already received a lot of interest from across the province and competitors from Prince Edward Island.

"Gyms are full of pretty ladies training very hard to reach their fitness goals and many have expressed interest in some form of competition," Bartlett said. "They don't want to develop the lean and muscular look of bodybuilders but would still like to compete.

"We introduced figure competitions about 10 years ago, which proved very popular."

Figure athletes tend to be still a bit too muscular for a lot of women, Bartlett said, so that's why he added the figure model category.

"It's a category for those girls who are interested in pursuing a career in modeling where facial beauty, poise, attractive shape and stage charisma is the criteria for winning."

The New Brunswick championships will also feature athletes from P.E.I. Bartlett made arrangements with the Canadian Bodybuilding Federation to allow island competitors to compete in New Brunswick, as they don't have their own association or provincial championships.

The N.B. championships has a long list of overall bodybuilding winners with several going on to the nationals and distinguishing themselves as the best in Canada.

French Lake's feisty Billy Cromwell came very close last year to joining this elite list with his win in the men's masters and middleweight division only to be narrowly edged out of the overall title by Saint John's Andy Briggs.

Cromwell will be back on stage Saturday with full intentions of winning that overall title. However, he won't be without his challengers as Fredericton's Mike Gray, Todd MacDougall and Mike Martin all have intentions of playing the spoiler.

Fredericton's Kelsey Wilson finds herself unexpectedly a favourite going into Saturday's Figure competition based on her surprise win at this spring's Atlantic championships.

"I'm both nervous and excited at the same time," Wilson said.

"When I won my division at the Atlantics, it was a shock as it was my first show, and I would have been happy to just have placed! Now, I find myself a favourite going into Saturday's competition and have pressure that I didn't have at the Atlantic's. I've trained hard and done everything I can in preparation, so I will just have to leave my fate in the hands of the judges."

Wilson will not be without some serious competition from Saint John veteran Heather Johnson and Fredericton's Barb McAloon.

Johnson won both the Atlantic masters and medium class division while McAloon was last year's N.B. medium class winner.