From Bodysport.com on March 4th 2006
For Jenny Lynn the Arnold Classic Figure International was over before it even started. Nope. it wasn'tt because she ran away with the show for the 4th consecutive year. It was over for Jenny because she didn’t even make it out of her hotel room to compete. When she arrived in Columbus a few days before the contest she was as ready as she could hope to be. She had just about sealed up 12 weeks of contest preparations that included up to 3 hours a day of cardio, extremely hard training and her usual very restrictive diet…and she was all set and ready to win again.
Then the unthinkable started to happen…
In the hotel room after the morning judging Jenny sat looking at pictures from the morning show, what would have been her competition, and with puffy eyes that were dry just for the moment she quietly reflected, "my legs were separated and looked the best they had ever been and I was in the best shape of my life. I really did it this time. But within an hour I started to smooth out."
As her story unfolded you couldn’t help but feel the absolute agony and disappointment she was trying so valiantly to keep inside that moment. With one of those Jenny Lynn stiff upper lip smiles that covered up her broken heart she went on to explain that she was on the money on Wednesday morning when she got out of bed. Then as the day progressed she started to smooth out and look drawn. Her boyfriend Blair was there and expressed the panic that ensued as despite their best efforts they could not improve her rapidly deteriorating physique, "her legs just smoothed out and she started looking skinny. We didn’t know she was sick yet so we didn’t know what was wrong. She ate and drank what she was supposed to but nothing worked." Then the first signs of her being sick started to hit as her appetite left her and her stomach didn't feel right.
By Thursday morning all hell had broken loose and Jenny was so sick she was barely able to leave the bathroom. She still held out hope and Blair scoured the City of Columbus for an over-the-counter solution to Jenny’s rapidly deteriorating condition but despite trying everything they could possibly think of short of bringing in a Voodoo priest, she was not getting any better. They hoped she would be well enough on Friday but as the night progressed, so did her illness.
Friday morning, the day of her show, Jenny was still sick as a dog and barely able to stand and when she did it was only long enough to get herself back into the bathroom. The doctor was called but despite what Jenny had hoped, Mother Nature was not going to be stopped by modern medicine at this point and she was told she would just have to ride it out. Still insisting that she could somehow pry herself out of bed or off the can, pour what was left of herself into some heels and rhinestones and try to win a 4th time, Jenny would not give up hope that she would be able to compete. One hour before she was supposed to be on stage, Jenny finally threw in the towel knowing full well she would not make the trip downstairs to get on the bus let alone get onstage and compete.
She called her Manger JM Manion and let him know she would be spending the 2006 Arnold Figure International in her hotel room.
Jenny spend the rest of the morning and early afternoon crying out the last few drops of water she had in her body, frustrated with the injustice of things she simply couldn’t control. But Jenny is never one to lay down for anything without a fight and despite there not being much of anything left inside her flu wracked body; she found enough spark to tell us through puffy eyes that "it’s OK, this was meant to happen for some reason. I’ll just have to hold off buying that patio furniture I wanted until after the Olympia this year."
It was just the flu; don’t make the mistake of counting her out quite yet.
