Speed Queen

From excelling at track sports to competing on Survivor to winning the Figure Olympia title twice, Cydney Gillon has wasted no time. And the scary thing is, she's just getting started.

- STEVE MAZZUCCHI

FOR AS LONG AS SHE CAN REMEMBER, Cydney Gillon has been fast. "We had this school race called the Turkey Trot," she recalls. "And I won it every single year until I broke my ankle one year all the way from preschool through fifth grade."

But that's just kid stuff, right? Not exactly. Since those early days in the Atlanta suburb of Douglasville, USA, Gillon has made a habit of arriving ahead of schedule. She did her first bodybuilding show at 14, cracked the UPenn track team at 18, reached the final four of Survivor: Kaôh Rōng at 23, and in 2017 became the youngest-ever Figure Olympia champ at 25. We're sensing a trend here.

Just because her rise has been speedy, though, doesn't mean it hasn't been interesting. Take, for example, how she got into bodybuilding in the first place. When Gillon was 5, her parents were not exactly fit. Dad Skip was pushing 180 kilos, while Mom Tangelea was more than 90. "And you know how kids have no filter?" Gillon says.

“I was like, ‘Mom, y’all are fat!’ ” That wake-up call kicked off a spectacular turnaround that saw both her parents become competitive bodybuilders.

Then they flipped the script on their loud-mouthed daughter when the “junk food junkie” developed high cholesterol at 12. Mom corralled her diet, and Gillon started working out, discovered her genetics were figurefriendly...and never looked back.