Body-building icon Ben Weider dies at 85

**TunnelRat** · 10-18-2008, 11:01 PM

<div></div><div id="QUOTEHEAD">QUOTE</div><div id="QUOTE">Globe & Mail, MONTREAL — Ben Weider, a legend in the world of body building, died suddenly on Friday in a Montreal hospital.

He was 85.</div>

Best known for founding the International Federation of Body Building in 1940 with his brother Joe, he was also a businessman, a philanthropist and a scholar with a keen interest in Napoleonic history.

Ben Weider Dies

**Lol** · 10-19-2008, 08:36 PM

The first weights I ever used were from a Weider set that my dad bought along with a cheap Weider bench. He had that set of Weider exercise wall charts that he pinned up on the spare room wall where he kept the weights. I remember those days with a fondness.

I don't think BB became what Ben and Joe originally envisioned (or maybe it did&#33

but it certainly made them a lot of dosh. My biggest gripe with them is not that they turned a blind eye to the drug scene but that they made me think that what I saw in their M&F and Flex mags was obtainable through hard work and supps alone (I was young and stoopid); they ran a lot of pretty misleading supp ads over the years.