Nigel Si­mon

T&T women body­builder Can­dice Carr-Archer is set to make her pro­fes­sion­al de­but at the Pro Body Build­ing Week­ly Women's Cham­pi­onship on Ju­ly 16 and 17 in Tam­pa, Flori­da–the fourth of five women's events on the In­ter­na­tion­al Fed­er­a­tion Body Build­ing Pro League Women's Sched­ule for the 2010 sea­son. When Carr-Archer graces the com­pe­ti­tion stage, she will be­come the sec­ond lo­cal women be­hind Neila Mur­ray to turn pro. Carr-Archer, who earned the right to turn pro­fes­sion­al af­ter she cap­tured the over­all women's body­build­ing ti­tle at the 37th Cen­tral Amer­i­can and Caribbean (CAC) Body­build­ing Cham­pi­onships, in St George's, Grena­da last Oc­to­ber, is al­so ex­pect­ed to com­pete at the Eu­rope Bat­tle of Cham­pi­ons Women from Ju­ly 23-25 in Hat­ford, Con­necti­cut, the fi­nal event be­fore the Ms Olympia in Las Ve­gas, Neva­da from Sep­tem­ber 24-25.

The women's sea­son be­gan last week with the Phoneix Pro Cham­pi­ons and will be fol­lowed by the Ms In­ter­na­tion­al in Colum­bus, Ohio (March 4-6) and New York Women's Cham­pi­onship in May, all of which Carr-Archer has opt­ed out. In Grena­da, the soft-spo­ken Carr-Archer, a lead­ing writer in the De­fence Force where she has been em­ployed for the past 15 years, al­so won the Mas­ters Body­build­ing Class from a field of eight com­peti­tors and the Women's over 55kg weight class to come away with three tro­phies. Speak­ing via tele­phone yes­ter­day, Carr-Archer said, "When I won the over­all fe­male body­build­ing cat­e­go­ry at the CAC Cham­pi­onship the IBBF Pro­fes­sion­al Card was sent to me to fill out which I did. "The card was re­turned to me two weeks ago and I'm now look­ing for­ward to my stint as a pro­fes­sion­al."

A three-time na­tion­al se­nior women and East­ern Caribbean cham­pi­on, Carr-Archer said she was still try­ing to work out a sched­ule which will al­low her to bal­ance her work sched­ule and be­ing a pro­fes­sion­al ath­lete. While wait­ing on the pro­fes­sion­al card Carr-Archer said she still main­tained her fit­ness lev­el. "Even though the CAC Cham­pi­onship was back in Oc­to­ber, I have not stopped train­ing and have been do­ing so six times a week at the Camp Og­den, Long Cir­cu­lar Gym, with Sun­days be­ing my off day." Since get­ting in­volved in the sport at the age of 21, Carr-Archer says she has been on a mis­sion to ful­fil a life­long dream. "Dur­ing my days at St George Col­lege I was al­ways at­tract­ed to the phys­i­cal sports like mar­tial arts and tough train­ing.

For some rea­son I nev­er fan­cied the games more suit­ed to girls back then like net­ball. Carr-Archer added, "What makes it so easy for me to do well in the sport is the sup­port I get. My train­er Roland Cam­bridge, em­ploy­ers, fam­i­ly mem­bers, hus­band Derek Archer, a for­mer T&T Olympic 400 me­tres run­ner, and my spon­sors have all giv­en me their full sup­port."