By Georgia Westgarth
WITH bolts, pins and plates holding her together Cranbourne’s Karen Flaherty is still very much the champion she once was.
Beating the universe may sound like a hard task for some, but not for Karen – who ended up doing it five times.
She’s the region’s bodybuilding golden girl and can go by many different names having won 21 bodybuilding titles and five on the world stage.
And she puts it all down to sheer determination.
The former amateur jockey is a bodybuilding inspiration, single mum, world champion and even the Buffest Woman in the Universe – even if it was back in 2007.
Now a retired champion, Karen is a personal trainer, strapper and beauty therapist, and her day-to-day life hasn’t slowed down since taking out the top gong nine years ago.
It was just two years after taking up the sport of bodybuilding that Karen was crowned Miss Olympia in the Natural Olympia Bodybuilding titles in Greece at 43 years old.
“I’d competed one year prior to that and ran third in the same competition; my goal was to win it the following year,” Karen said, and that she did.
But getting into shape to be the best in the world doesn’t come easy.
“Competing in bodybuilding changes everything in your life,” Karen said.
“The way you eat, socialise and train – it’s a 110 per cent commitment … Miss Olympia is the biggest title I’ve taken out.”
It was a title she won as the new girl on the block.
“In this industry there’s always the unknown, you never know who is going to pop up and if you’re going to compete you have to put your heart and soul in to it,” she said.
She weighed 47.5 kilograms when she was announced the buffest woman in the world.
“Most competitors blow out, putting on 15 to 20 kilos,” Karen said.
But what’s quite remarkable is that Karen would only have to lose about five kilos today to get back into that award winning shape.
Karen’s love for horses has never waned since it began when she was 10 years old despite an accident on top a young horse which nearly killed her.
“I’m at the track at 4am, three days a week. Since the accident I don’t ride, I saddle up the horses and hose them down for the love it,” she said.
In November 2014, Karen and her two daughters’ lives stopped after she was thrown off a horse and shattered her pelvis and hip during track work in Cranbourne.
“I actually stood up after the fall, with my hands on my knees and told the ambulance I feel like every muscle has been ripped off my body,” Karen said.
With numerous pins, bolts and plates holding her together, Karen is still partly numb in her hip and can’t train her legs in the gym like she once could.
But her hospital and rehabilitation transformation shocked doctors.
“The surgeon who put me back together told me I should be in a wheelchair for three months after the operation. I spent 15 days in hospital and walked out of surgery four weeks later,” she said.
“I was determined; I couldn’t wait to get out of there, and I was dedicated to my rehab, I did it twice a day and I remember asking for dumbbells during my rehab to keep working on my upper body.”
Karen got back on her daughter’s pony six months after recovering from her fall, but hasn’t ridden a race horse since.
She does, however, watch the horse that almost killed her run the track with a smile on her face.
“I had flashbacks for a while as to what could have happened if the horse had of taken off, because my foot was still caught in the stirrup,” she said.
After 10 years in the bodybuilding business, competing and judging, the name ‘Karen Flaherty’ is pretty well known.
She currently trains about 20 regular clients, but doesn’t call it work.
“I have the passion for it, I don’t feel like I’m working and seeing my girls succeed in competitions is the joy I get out of it,” she said.
Karen Flaherty is the sort of woman who won’t give up and said that “goals” are some of the most important things to have in one’s life.
She’s the Cranbourne woman who not only conquered her own goals but continues to inspire others to do the same every day.
And having ticked off most of her goals, Karen puts all that determination down to one thing – “self-satisfaction”.
