New York PRO 2024: Nick Walker did it again! How did Květon and Šádek do? Full results and report

One of the partial highlights of the bodybuilding season is mercilessly over and we have no choice but to try to evaluate New York PRO 2024 and present you with the results of each category. Right off the bat, however, it should be noted that Saturday, May 18th brought a great spectacle across the categories, and bodybuilding fans from all over the world came out in force at the Teaneck Marriott Hotel. But how did the star competitors fare in each category? Let's take a look.

Men's open bodybuilding

The highlight of the evening was undoubtedly the men's open bodybuilding, which, of course, rounded off the busy programme of the day. This prestigious competition was attended by twenty pros, including two Czech representatives - Milan Šádek and Josef Květoň. However, the eyes of foreign fans were directed especially to the return of Nick Walker, who announced this decision already in January this year. And as he said, so he did.

Besides that, however, a big rivalry was expected with the ultimately uninvolved Blessing Awodibu, who won the NY PRO in 2022. However, there were still plenty of fighters with Olympia experience left in the starting field, and the favourites included Tonio Burton or Martin Fitzwater.

And it was in this spirit that the prejudging, which we informed you about in yesterday's report, unfolded. Nick Walker, Tonio Burton, Martin Fitzwater and Stuart Sutherland featured in both the first and final call-ups, which meant one thing - they were among the favourites to win. Many experts attributed the top spot to one of the Fitzwater/Walker pairing, with Tonio and Stuart vying for third place as expected. Pepa came in a great second call, with Milan getting callout number three.

However, there was quite a lot of time between the preliminaries and the finals, and this of course meant that anything could happen to the competitors' forms. Fortunately for the competitors and the spectators, however, the form of all the protagonists of the competition only graded and the final was really interesting. The finals then saw the top 10 competitors invited on stage for further comparison. Unfortunately, there was no Czech participation among these athletes.

Milan Šádek ended up in 15th place, which is the worst position for him in the last 10 years of his professional career. In his Instagram post, the Czech athlete announced that he is considering the possibility of quitting after the current season.

In the end, however, nothing changed in the final standings and the results were as follows:

Results

As the head judge Tyler Manion later revealed, Nick and Martin were separated by a single point after the prejudging, which perfectly illustrates how exciting the competition actually was. However, in the end, Nick managed to achieve his ambitious goal. In doing so, he notched up his third career professional win - the second of which was a New York PRO win. This puts him alongside bodybuilding legends such as Kai Greene, Big Ramy and Juan Morelo.

At the same time, Nick announced that his next goal is the Olympia in October. And since he finished fifth in 2021 and has already taken bronze in 2022, he is undoubtedly one of the favorites to win. Let's hope that nothing will stand in his way this time and that his participation will increase the spectator appeal of Mr. Olympia.

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Bodybuilding up to 212 pounds

The under 212lb category was also a great spectacle with 17 well prepared competitors who were clearly looking forward to stepping into the new season. In the end, however, the competition developed in line with the expectations of the experts, where from the first call it looked like a duel between Oleh Kryvyi and defending champion Kerrith Bajj.

Both of these riders belonged in the Top 6 at Olympia and both of them showed great form today, which is why they also earned the most popular spot in the middle of the line. Francisco Barrios Vlk and Giuseppe Zagarella battled it out for third place in the prejudging.

During the final, the riders' forms perhaps matured even more and all of the aforementioned foursome showed great form. The top ten competitors who eventually made it to the final were given the opportunity to showcase their routines, after which there were two more callouts.

The first one featured all the other competitors, while the second one featured the favourites - Oleh Kryvyi, Kerrith Bajjo, Francisco Barrios Vlk and Giuseppe Zagarella. However, as the Ukrainian competitor showed the best form this time, it was to be expected that Oleh would take a valuable victory on his debut at NY PRO. And that's exactly what happened when the judges announced the following order:

Top 5

Classic Physique

The Classic Physique category was originally supposed to have 23 competitors, but in the end there were some slight adjustments, because Thomas Conelly or Irish competitor Shane Cullen did not participate. However, even here there was a clear rivalry from the beginning of the race between the two competitors who took the first places at the Pittsburg PRO held last week. Matthew Greggo and Eric Wildberger were thus in the middle of the first call-up and it was clear that one of them would be the winner.

After the final invocations, which weren't much different from the semifinal ones, the athletes were still given time to pose for the crowd. When the results were announced, it was really exciting and it was not clear until the last moment who would actually dominate the competition. However, the order was as follows:

Top 5

Other categories

The New York PRO was a very attractive competition for the spectators, but of course very challenging for the competitors, as there were many great competitors to represent in almost all categories (only the fitness and wheelchair bodybuilding were missing). The Men's Physique also provided an interesting spectacle, which was eventually dominated by Afghan competitor Ali Bilal ahead of Brazilian Vitor Chaves, who was a slight favourite before the competition.

The Women's Physique category was finally dominated by Sheronica Henton from the United States, while in a packed competition of 27 competitors from the Figure category, the best impression was again made by the local Maria Luisa Baeza Diaz Pereira. Aimee Delgado dominated the Bikini category and Giselle Machado, who had already earned her invitation to the Olympics with her earlier victory, was the winner in the Wellness category, so the starting field for the Olympics in this category was not expanded.

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