McLish describes how steroid use has changed the sport of bodybuilding. Watch more of her interview at
Rachel McLish is a female bodybuilding champion, actress and author. When she earned the inaugural Ms. Olympia bodybuilding title in 1980, she put the sport of women’s bodybuilding on the map and became an international role model for women’s and girl’s fitness. Fashion-model beautiful, she dispelled commonly held notions about female bodybuilders as being necessarily masculine and unattractive. She was a leader in making physical fitness as much a part of women’s lives as it had always been for men.
McLish was raised in Harlingen, Texas in the Rio Grande border country. She began weight training while attending Pan American University as an outlet for her high-energy personality and found it to be an almost “mystical experience.” She graduated in 1978 with a degree in health and physical education and went on to found South Texas’s first health club.
She was catapulted into the public eye when she won the first Ms. Olympia contest in 1980, and then won the title again in 1982. She also won the United States Bodybuilding Championships in 1980, and over the next four years placed in the top three in five other national contests. In the years that followed, McLish authored two New York Times best-selling books – Flex Appeal by Rachel (1984) and Perfect Parts (1987) — and acted in action films. In 1999 she was inducted into the International Federation of BodyBuilding and Fitness Hall of Fame.
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