'Sick of the bitching' – Sibel Osman on privilege, opportunity and keeping the bar high

Masters Bikini Pro on why this sport is a privilege, not a right and what needs to change to earn Masters bodybuilding the respect it deserves.

SIBEL OSMAN does not hold back opening this instalment of the Masters Series: "I am sick and tired of when every competitive season starts, so does the bitching."

She's not talking about her competitors, but the culture of complaint that creeps in every prep season. Prep is hard, she says, but no one's holding anyone hostage. If you can't do it and you're not enjoying it, leave it.

That frustration comes from a place of gratitude. Masters athletes, Osman points out, are lucky to compete in a sport with no age cap – a privilege few other sports afford. But her bigger concern is opportunity.

As a Masters amateur hoping to turn pro, the pathway is narrow – in Europe, she notes, there is only one Masters pro qualifier a year. Pro Masters athletes face the same scarcity of shows. It is a gap she would like the industry to address.

Why does it persist? Osman points to a perception that Masters athletes lack longevity, despite having competed for more than half her life herself. She is equally candid about a harder truth within her own category: not every Masters competitor is stepping on stage with a serious, competition-ready physique and that dilutes the respect the division as a whole has earned. "There's Masters athletes and then there's Masters athletes," she says.

Her call to action is for standards to rise from within. The more seasoned athletes bring genuinely elite physiques to Masters stages, she argues, the harder it becomes for the industry to overlook the category – and the faster attitudes will shift. As she puts it, today's younger athletes will one day be Masters too. Keeping the bar high now is how the division stops being seen as an afterthought.

Watch the latest episode of the Masters Series below:

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