Bodybuilder turned “Governator” Arnold Schwarzenegger visited Idaho this week to dedicate a 9-foot statue depicting him posing at the height of his bodybuilding career.
The former governor of California was in the state to give the statue a final once over before it was sent off to be bronzed. Its final destination is outside his childhood home in the Austrian village of Thal.
The statue was made by sculptor Ralph Crawford who Arnie first commissioned in the 1970s to design a small bronze trophy for a bodybuilding event. The former Mr Universe said of Crawford that he was “known in the physique world as a Rodin – everything is very dramatic.”
Schwarzenegger also revealed that he had picked a bodybuilding pose for the new commission because that was what had led to fame and fortune in the USA.
“It was the bodybuilding that got me to America, that got me into movies, that got me the governorship,” he said.