Sergio Oliva
Sergio Oliva ( born July 4, 1941 in Havana, Cuba, † November 12 2012 in Chicago, United States) was a Cuban bodybuilder.
Career
Sergio Oliva was born in Guanabacoa, a suburb of the Cuban capital of Havana. There he ran successfully weightlifting and was sent by the Cuban weightlifting federation in 1962 to the Central American and Caribbean Games in Kingston / Jamaica. During this trip Oliva left the Cuban team and asked the U.S. Consulate for political asylum.
First, Oliva was living in Miami, later he moved to Chicago about. At this time he lived modestly of repair work on televisions, but continued to train with weights. 1963 Oliva graduated in Chicago on the " Duncan " YMCA sports club and found in Bob Gajda an excellent weightlifting coach. But soon Oliva devoted increasingly to bodybuilding, and devoted himself from 1965 entirely to the sport. He first started out for the AAU (Amateur Athletic Union) and then moved to the IFBB (International Federation of Bodybuilding & Fitness). From the mid- sixties Oliva was the measure of all things in bodybuilding and won three times in a row with the Mr. Olympia the most important title that was awarded in this sport. Only with the emergence of Arnold Schwarzenegger with which Oliva provided some memorable duels, the star of the native Cuban slowly began to sink. Nevertheless, Sergio Oliva was the bodybuilder, which Schwarzenegger last defeat in bodybuilding taught ( Mr. Olympia 1969).
Late in his career played Oliva competitions of the rather insignificant associations WABBA or WBBG. 1984 Oliva celebrated 43 years in the IFBB and launched a comeback after twelve years of absence, at the Mr. Olympia. There he took the final eighth. When he had again become eighth in the subsequent year, Oliva he finally retired from competitive skating.
Under the pseudonym "Black Power", he starred in four films.
Oliva was a police officer in Chicago.
He died on November 12, 2012 at kidney failure.