Given the extensive levels of physical training, diet regimen and conditioning that bodybuilders are required to undertake, as well as the competitive element, we feel like it's appropriate to call bodybuilding a sport. By doing so, we're able to include the trailblazer Chris Dickerson (not to be confused with the baseball player of the same name) in this list.
Dickerson is an interesting man in many ways. As well as being a bodybuilder, he's also an accomplished opera singer. His career was full of firsts; he was the first African American Mr. America winner in the American Athletic Union's bodybuilding competition in 1968, and when he came out in the 1970s he became the first openly gay winner of the IFBB Mr. Olympia contest, although it took him until 1982 to claim the prize after a couple of second-place finishes. Although he's almost 80, he still trains to this day, and offers advice to younger bodybuilders who write to him.