Despite success on the international stage, Cambodia’s most revered bodybuilder struggles to make ends meet.

Six hands gently slap the sculpted arms, legs and torso of Sok Sopheak, Cambodia’s most prominent bodybuilder. They are all applying ‘Dream Tan’, an instant skin colour made in the USA, which promises “the best contest colour in the world”.

Commonly referred to by his nickname ‘Polo’, Sok Sopheak is getting ready for action and it is clearly a three-man job. After his body has been transformed into an unnaturally deep chocolate-brown, Polo takes a deep breath and grimaces as he flexes every sinew in his body to awesome effect.

“It [Dream Tan] costs $50 for one tub,” he says later, after reverting to his natural skin tone. “I order it from the USA because we don’t have it here in Cambodia. Before applying it, muscles look nice but it helps them look even better.”

The cost of being a bodybuilder is a theme Polo returns to time and again. Even though he recently came fourth out of 32 competitors in his class at the 2011 Asian Men’s Bodybuilding Championship in Bangkok, and has a relatively lucrative job as a gym instructor at Sofitel Phnom Penh Phokeethra hotel, he struggles to find the cash to support his expensive pursuit.

The former air-conditioning technician came to Phnom Penh as an 18-year-old, and after encountering a former Mr Cambodia at a gym in 2003 he decided to get in shape. Three years later he won the competition himself.
This year was the third time in a row that Polo finished fourth at the Asian Men’s Bodybuilding Championship, but with 5kg of crucial bodybuilding supplements costing $200 and lasting only six weeks, he is feeling the pinch.

This year, Sofitel sponsored him and paid for these supplements but he wants to see the recently rejigged Cambodian Bodybuilding and Fitness Federation (CBBFF) do more to help.

“I want to compete, but it is very tiring. If I train hard, I need a bodybuilder’s diet and lots of supplements, but it is difficult to afford these things,” he says, before adding: “There is another competition [the Southeast Asian Bodybuilding Championships] in February but I’m not going because I get no support from the federation.”

He feels the CBBFF should help its members with the costs of supplements, food and other expenses directly attributable to bodybuilding, such as sportswear.“When we go to compete for our country I also think there should be a certain amount of respect and encouragement from the federation,” he adds.

“I have competed for Cambodia in international tournaments and won second, third or fourth place, and then when I return to Phnom Penh there is nobody even to pick me up, nothing. I had to walk out of the airport and pay for a tuk tuk to get home. It is very disappointing.”