Myanmar's musclemen flexing for glory

YANGON-NAMPA/AFP Sporting just a navy blue thong and several layers of tan oil, Zarli Tin says he dreams of becoming Myanmar's greatest bodybuilder as the discipline undergoes a revival after years in the doldrums. One of a new generation of musclemen, he hopes to be among the beneficiaries of a cash injection for the sport, which floundered like all others during the wasteful and corrupt junta era. I'm not great yet, I'm not very famous... but I'm trying, I'm on the way, says the jovial 33-year-old. Myanmar's reformist government has loosened the purse strings for sport as it hunts success at the Southeast Asian (SEA) Games regional event which it will host in December, billed as the country's 'coming out' party. It has targeted several medals at bodybuilding and hopes to extend the nation's impressive record in the event. Myanmar claimed two silvers at the 2001 World Bodybuilding Championship -held on home soil- a bronze at the Asian Games the following year and has taken a clutch of medals whenever the sport is contested at the SEA Games. But bodybuilders say those achievements mask a deep worry, with woeful funding over the final years of the greedy junta leaving them without decent gyms, proper coaching or nutrition - a huge cost in an impoverished country. Financial struggles At the final SEA Games selection contest in Yangon, 32-year-old truck driver Tint Lwin said he struggles to afford the high protein diet and supplements required to power him through a brutal four- to six-hour daily training regime. The money I get from work isn't even enough for a single bottle of the vitamins I need to train, he says. But the sport will get bigger... the officials are helping us get better. It will come. Myanmar's sporting prowess was eviscerated by the former regime, with a lack of investment in facilities and planning choking the pipeline of talent in all disciplines. Football fell hardest with the national team slumping from one of Asia's best in the mid-1960s and the 1970s. For the nation's bodybuilders the demise has been less steep, but still keenly felt. Once they toured schools and colleges drawing adulation with their combination of muscle, machismo and showmanship. But the visits waned as student activities of all kinds came under intense scrutiny from the paranoid former junta after a failed college-led uprising in 1988. Strongmen have flexed their way back into popularity over the last few years. The top bodybuilders are very famous here, says 19-year-old student Oak Tharkyaw who is among the raucous 150-strong audience. For all the rivalry, Zarli says the bodybuilders are like brothers , united by punishing training and an all-consuming passion. We may be poor, he adds. But we love this sport.