Bodybuilder Justin Rys Out of Jail, with Big Plans

WEIGHT ON: In his new personal training gym, Justin Rys teaches weight-loss and muscle-building tricks. He is full of ideas, from a prison-themed nightclub to a fat-burning cookie.

When bodybuilder Justin Rys stood in the dock and heard the judge sentence him to 10½ years in prison, it must have seemed as though his life was over.

January 3, 2009

The former Mr Oceania had enjoyed the trappings of success - fast cars, money, a competition-winning body and beautiful friends - a lifestyle that was peeled back in court to reveal a chronic drug addiction, body dismorphic syndrome, and a heart so damaged that medics gave him two years to live.

But he spent his lag studying, having counselling, exercising using other prisoners as weights, and launching his Convict Gear clothing range.

Now he is out of prison wiser, clean, and, he says, more self-aware.

The staccato of hard house music throbs from the stereo as he moves between the weights in his new gym, gleaming at the temples and chewing on a protein cookie made by his partner.

"Try one," he thrusts a cookie in our direction. "They taste too good to be good for you."

He is affable and well-mannered, a consummate self-marketer, offering the reporter and photographer a clutch of branded key rings and a bottle of thermogenic weight-loss tablets ("all legal", he laughs), which he created himself.

Rys seems to have landed on his feet. He has started a personal training gym, teaching weightloss and muscle-building tricks. He has also launched a bodybuilding supplement range, and his Convict Gear clothes are selling fast.

The incredible focus he once centred on his body has shifted to business. "If I focus too much on the other things, then I will start hurting my health."

Used to eating 13 meals a day, he lost 30 kilograms from his 140kg peak when, legend has it, he modelled for Peter Jackson's King Kong, but he is still almost indescribably huge.

Eyes covertly turn as he wanders the supermarket aisles with his picturesque partner, Justine, and people approach him on the street to say hello.

He began bodybuilding 14 years ago. He was a 17-year-old sprinter, weighing 69kg, who started going to the gym after tearing a muscle.

"I put on 15kg in the space of two months and thought maybe it was something I was good at."

When he started using fantasy in the 1990s it was legal, a colourless, odourless liquid that was popular with body builders for reducing pain and countering the effects of ephedrine and steroids, and for helping them to sleep.

When it became illegal in 2002, he gave up for a month, but it was too hard. He was addicted.

By the time he was arrested in 2004, he had a litre-a-week fantasy habit. He admitted 11 charges of importing the drug (relating to more than 200 litres of fantasy) and one of money laundering and was jailed for 10½ years, reduced to 7½ years on appeal.

When Rys went to prison he was suffering cold turkey. It was, he says, "shocking". At his sentencing, the court was told research showed withdrawal from fantasy was worse than from heroin and cocaine.

In prison, he paid for his own drug and alcohol counsellor to visit and also sought psychological help. The court had been told he suffered from megarexia, an eating disorder where no matter how big you are, you see yourself as too small.

He started studying for a diploma in drug and alcohol studies, management, business studies and marketing, achieving As and A+s.

Rys worked out in the yard using inmates as weights, stacking two or three of the biggest guys on his shoulders for squats, getting them to lie on his back while he did pushups.

Last year, 2½ years into his sentence, he was freed.

"It was weird coming out, strange, because you didn't know what to do with yourself. You get so used to people telling you what to do."

His nine-year relationship, which had weathered his lag, ended when he came out, something he avoids questions on out of respect for his former partner.

He is contrite, says "I did the crime, I deserved to do the time", but now he wants to move on. His business seems to be doing well if his Jaguar is anything to go by ("You should see my plane - just kidding"). He is brimful of schemes, including a prison-themed nightclub and a fat-burning cookie. "It's totally possible. It makes me feel why haven't people done it before."

When asked if prison changed him, he pauses: "I think it did, actually, in a positive way. I think a lot more about other people where I think, beforehand, I was very much self-focused. Now I think a lot more about how things affect others."

Is he happy? "I feel good, but being happy for me is like I've totally achieved everything I want.

"I'm nowhere near where I want to be. This is just a start."

GIANT FALL FROM GRACE

The one-time Mr Big of the Wellington market was jailed for his part in the biggest fantasy conviction in New Zealand history.

The drug, smuggled from Romania and Moldova in wine bottles and vegetable cans, had a street value of up to $2.1 million. Better known as "Big J", Justin Rys was the kingpin of the trade in Wellington, police said. When he was arrested in December 2004, the market dried up.

With a personality as big as his physique, Rys came across as a gentle giant. But some who claimed to have bought drugs from him disagreed. He was "a manipulator and a control freak", one told The Dominion Post. "He does everything he can possibly do to get you to buy from him. It's exactly the same methods as a P dealer."

Rys spent his early childhood in Wales. He then lived in Palmerston North and Hastings, before going to St Patrick's College in Silverstream, excelling at rugby and soccer.

But he dreamed of becoming a professional wrestler and started pumping iron. He won the Teen Mr Wellington and its national equivalent. Four years later he was Junior Mr Australasia. He went on to claim the Mr Oceania and Mr New Zealand titles.

Rys publicly put his success down to discipline - the Les Mills gym in Cuba St became his second home - and a "high-protein, medium-carbohydrate and low-fat" diet. But in 2000 he was barred from competition for two years after refusing to provide a urine sample.

He promoted deer velvet and appeared to make a great living selling protein supplements. In May 2004 he was convicted of illegally importing growth hormones from China and given a six-month suspended sentence. Seven months later, he was arrested in Taupo.

Source:  New Zealand Dominion Post