On July 30, Arnold Schwarzenegger Celebrates His 70th Birthday

As our thoughts turn to this year's MR. OLYMPIA competition, we reflect on the man who won the title seven times.

- Peter McGough

When I first started lifting weights in 1962, my mother cried, saying, “Where did I go wrong? My boy has pictures of naked oiled-up men on his wall, and all his friends have pictures of girls in their rooms.”

As children we would be sitting in the classroom with the parents at the back. If the teacher said something negative about my work, my father would come forward and smack me, as other parents would do to their kids.

I was lonely as a child. Now I see there was an advantage to sitting by myself for hours, day after day. It gave me the chance to think and visualize and form my goals.

Joe [Weider] had a habit of finishing sentences for you. And with Joe being Joe, if he finished the thought, then the whole thought became his.

I think Joe came to look upon me as the son he never had. And I owe him so much for bringing me to America. Without Joe I wouldn’t have had the life I’ve had.

When I was 15, I thought the Weider Research Clinic was a huge research center somewhere in California connected to the movie industry and full of guys wanting to be Hercules.

At the 1972 Mr. Olympia [which Arnold won controversially], in Essen, it didn’t occur to Sergio Oliva that my white body would stand out against the dark wall behind us, while his would blend right in.

There will never be another like Sergio—that I can guarantee. Everything after him is fake. He was the original. He was “the Myth.”

From 1970 on my instinct was to win: eliminate anyone who was in competition, destroy your enemy, and move on without any hesitation at all. I was the Terminator years before the movie was made.