Kalopia

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39th  Demetrios Fitness Competition

The 39th Demetrios Fitness Competition crowned a new Demetriad in Helios this week, as Andreas Kallistos of the South Helios Iron Hall took the overall title.
Held in parallel with the First Party Congress of Dýnamis, the competition drew particulalry large public attention this year, though organizers emphasized that the Demetrios Fitness Competition remains an independent annual sporting event. Hosted by the federation of Action Group Gyms competitors came from across the country, and a handful of international guests as well. Though almost all action groups are now affiliated with Dýnamis, with many of the gym members, or leaders also serving as delegates in the party congress.  

The party congress brought thousands of Dýnamis members to Helios, giving the competition its largest audience in years. Organizers said ticket demand exceeded expectations, with spectators filling the venue early in the day.

Kallistos won the Demetriad title after placing first in the heavyweight bodybuilding division. The 28-year-old competitor was given his title by former 3 time Demetriad Ajax Mavros, himself one of the of handful of senior Dýnamis figures formally involved in the event. Mavros praised the competitors, and Kallistos in particular, for their discipline and said the Action Group gym tradition remained one of the clearest inheritances from Herakles Demetrios.
The Demetrios Fitness Competition was founded in 5693, the year after Herakles Demetrios died, by a group of physical culture clubs and early Action Group gyms in Helios. Demetrios, better known as an artist, essayist, and founder of Dynamism, had a major influence on the country’s physical culture movement. His belief that “the first work is the self” helped connect bodybuilding, posture, training, and aesthetic discipline into a broader culture of self-formation.

In its early years, the competition was a small memorial event held among Action Groups that had been directly influenced by Demetrios’ lectures and writings. Over time, it grew into one of Kalopia’s most recognizable physique contests adding many other competitions and contests. While it has never reached the scale of the largest international bodybuilding championships, it has developed a strong reputation. 

For Kallistos, the win marks the biggest achievement of his career so far. “It is not just about being the biggest man on stage,” Kallistos said. “You have to show control."

- Andreas Kallistos

“I remember being a young kid and looking up at pictures of prime Demetrios,” Kallistos said. “My dad trained with him. He used to tell me that Demetrios would never let men become tunnel-visioned about being the biggest. Everything was about balance and proportion, not only on stage, but in life. He would say, what is the point of having all this muscle if your home life is a wreck, or you have no friends, or your weird or something? He made the gym into a community that helped men become fuller people.”

The next Demetrios Fitness Competition is expected to return to Helios next year, though organizers said they are considering a larger venue if public interest continues to grow.

- Hektor Nikandros at the closing of the 1st Dýnamis Party Congress

After the contest, a formal gala was held for competitors, judges, former Demetriads, and representatives of the federation of Action Group Gyms. Hektor Nikandros, the only four-time consecutive Demetriad and now Director-General of Dýnamis, was among the former champions invited to speak. Asked by reporters to comment on the controversy surrounding President Lakaridis, Nikandros declined to make the scandal the centre of the evening, but stated the following.

"It would be improper to spoil an evening dedicated to the ascent of the person with an extended discussion of a man so plainly unformed," Nikandros said. "But no one should mistake this for an isolated failure of character. The bourgeois political order produces precisely this type, the man who is capable only of avaricious accumulation and social climbing, who has risen by circumventing and tricking tests rather than facing test with honour and dignity. This bourgeois disordered man wears the appearance of substance while remaining inwardly cowardly and unfinished."

He said continued at length. "The bourgeois political order obsessed with comfort elevates the unformed so long as he is wealthy enough, connected enough, sufficiently useful to the interests already dominant within the existing order. Then when the unformed nature becomes visible, the public is asked to treat this as an accident. BAH! I say BAH! It is not an accident. It is the bourgeois system of comfort producing exactly what it was designed to produce. Flabby men of no discipline! Flabby men who have thrown away their potential! BAH!"

"The old order speaks of merit while systematically burying merit under forms and bureaucracy. It speaks of liberty, BAH, it leaves the person trapped beneath poverty, inherited rank, exhaustion, lack formation, and degradation. This is the natural consequence of a political order organized around the reproduction of existing hierarchy rather than the creation of tested hierarchy."

"We do not answer degradation with sentimentality. We do not simply afirm a person as they are. To pity the person is to leave them in indignity To flatter him is worse because flattery preserves him in his present condition denying him the chance to pursue their full potential. The scientifically correct response is to identify the barriers to formation, clear them away, and then demand proof of each person of their contribution to the living nation and the achievement of the fullness of their potential."

"The dynamic revolution is near at hand comrades and brothers. It is the necessary historical and scientific passage from hierarchy of accidental to hierarchy of merit! The old order is capable increasingly of only producing produces disordered men and it therefore will create only further disorder until the necessary historical and scientific preconditions are met for the revolution of dynamism and merit. We answer that the future belongs only to those who can be formed, tested, and made worthy of it. And all can be made worthy if only they are set free of oppression!"

Nikandros demanded his remarks be reported in full.