The irony that Sergio Oliva was born on the fourth of July, 1941, is lost on no one who knows the man or his reputation. For throughout his six decades Sergio has shown nothing if not a burning desire for his own independence, the very kind the forefathers of America, his adoptive country, proclaimed their right to 165 years earlier. But when Fidel Castro’s opposition movement overthrew Cuba’s Batista government in 1959 Sergio suddenly found his homeland was no longer a place where personal freedoms could be savored.

A prodigiously gifted athlete from childhood, Sergio realized that his involvement in state sponsored sport could be his ticket to, if not freedom itself, then the opportunity to escape the stifling confines of the Cuban working class. Blessed with an almost preternatural combination of strength, speed and flexibility, Sergio wisely decided to channel his efforts into Olympic-style weightlifting.

Not surprisingly, he took to the sport immediately and, by the age of twenty, had already become Cuba’s top lifter and consequently its 198-pound class representative in the 1961 Pan American Games held in Kingston, Jamaica.

From Jamaica Sergio emigrated to the United States; first to Miami, where he performed odd jobs ranging from TV repair to unloading trucks. Then, in 1963, he made his way north to Chicago.

It was at Chicago’s Duncan YMCA that the weightlifter was introduced to the sport of bodybuilding by top local bodybuilder Bob Gajda. Gajda recognized the young man’s incredible physical potential and took him under his wing. As predicted, Sergio’s muscles ballooned immediately under the unique stresses of a bodybuilding regimen. He took to bodybuilding as an eagle to soaring and by the end of the year had won his first title, Mr. Young Chicagoland.

By 1966 Sergio Oliva had had enough of the vicissitudes of the AAU and decided to turn professional by joining the International Federation of Bodybuilders (IFBB). In short order he won the 1966 Mr. World and 1967 Mr. Universe titles and finally, with little resistance, the 1967 Mr. Olympia title. Only four years after getting his start in competitive bodybuilding Sergio Oliva was the undisputed king of the walk.

While Sergio handled his teutonic threat to win his third consecutive Olympia, the lessons learned in defeat served the young Schwarzenegger well the following year as he came back to edge out Sergio in one of the closest results in the sport’s history.

Sergio, disappointed but undaunted, redoubled his efforts and returned to the Olympia stage in 1972 bigger than ever, and ready to upset the applecart of the now two-time defending Mr. Olympia Schwarzenegger.

But it was not to be. Whether it was due to politics, as some assert, or Arnold’s uncanny ability to will himself to victory, Sergio, now known as The Myth, would take the runner-up spot that night in Essen, Germany, despite reaching his all-time best condition.

It was a huge blow to the man, one which would ultimately lead him out of the IFBB and into relative bodybuilding obscurity for the next 12 years.