T&T's Can­dice John, daugh­ter of for­mer Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter in the UNC Gov­ern­ment Car­los John, placed joint 16th with 13 oth­ers in the women's fig­ure cat­e­go­ry at the pres­ti­gious Olympia week­end, in Las Ve­gas, ear­li­er this month. Com­pet­ing at the Las Ve­gas Con­ven­tion Cen­tre, on Sep­tem­ber 17, John cre­at­ed his­to­ry by be­com­ing the first T&T woman to par­tic­i­pate at an In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion Body Build­ing (IF­BB) Olympia Cham­pi­onship. She gained 80 points. The 29-year-old John, a for­mer T&T and Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) win­ner who is trained by Ian Adams at Bio Fit­ness gym, qual­i­fied for the event af­ter a sec­ond-place show­ing in the Toron­to Pro Su­per­show. The Olympia ti­tle was won by Amer­i­can Nicole Wilkins while Erin Stern, the 2010 win­ner, was sec­ond fol­lowed by Ava Cow­an, Can­dice Keene and Tere­sa An­tho­ny to round out the top five.

So far for the 2011 sea­son she has al­so fin­ished fifth (twice) and sixth. Pri­or to com­pet­ing at the Olympia event, John was a sixth-place fin­ish­er at the New York Pro Cham­pi­onship Fig­ure Open and fifth at both the Pitts­burgh Pro Fig­ure & Biki­ni Cham­pi­onship and the Eu­ropa Show of Cham­pi­ons in Or­lan­do. At the New York event held in May, Cheryl Brown, Heather Dees, Laris­sa Reis, Alea Suarez and Gi­na Trochi­ano were the ath­letes to fin­ish ahead of John In Pitts­burgh she fin­ished be­hind Brown, Dees, Kris­ten Na­grani and Gen­nifer Strobo and at Or­lan­do, Brown was the again the win­ner fol­lowed by Can­dice Keene, Strobo, Na­grani and John, who turned pro­fes­sion­al in 2007.