Cebu City will be hosting an international bodybuilding competition via the National Athletic Committee (NAC) World 2018 Championships happening from May 31 to June 3 at the International Convention Center (IEC) in Mabolo.
It will be the first time that this prestigious bodybuilding competition will be held in Asia.
“This event took four years in the making. It started just as an idea of how feasible it is to hold the event in our country,” NAC Philippines president Patrick Tan said during a press conference yesterday at the Maayo Hotel in Mandaue City.
“We got a lot of very good feedback from the competitors and NAC international people were here several times and they liked our place,” Tan added.
In 2015, the Philippines was presented to the NAC congress and the members unanimously voted the country as the official venue of the event.
Dennis Delgado, NAC World 2018 Championships event coordinator, said that one of the reasons why Cebu was chosen as venue is because it is not congested when it comes to traffic. He added that foreign competitors, especially Europeans, wanted to take a vacation after the competition, so Cebu was a good idea.
Lone Cebuana
As of the moment, 37 countries have confirmed their participation to the competition with 50 bodybuilders coming from Korea alone while 100 will be coming from the Philippines, which includes seven Cebuano qualifiers for the men’s and one for the women’s competition.
Jeizza Marie Ballard, who won third place in the 2007 Phil-Asia Fitness Class and second place in the 2017 NAC Phil-Asia Bikini Class Qualifiers, is the only Cebuana in the event.
“This is the biggest thing that I will be joining compared to the previous years,” Ballard shared. “I felt a little bit of pressure considering that it is happening here (Cebu).”
Adding spice to the big event is a newly introduced class for the women’s division, which is the bikini class. Other classes are athletic, shape, bodybuilding and men’s physique.