Arnold Schwarzenegger Statue – Columbus, OH
Walking down North High Street in Columbus, you round a corner and there he is: eight feet of bronze Arnold Schwarzenegger, mid-pose, veins and all, planted on the sidewalk outside the Greater Columbus Convention Center like he owns the block. Which, in this town, he sort of does.
The statue catches Arnold in his signature “twisted double-biceps” pose, the one that helped him win seven Mr. Olympia titles, cast at roughly life-and-a-half size: about 8 feet tall and 600 pounds of bronze by California sculptor Ralph Crawford. And it’s here for a reason. Columbus is basically Arnold’s bodybuilding hometown: he won the Mr. World title just up the street at the old Veterans Memorial Auditorium in 1970, and the city has hosted his Arnold Sports Festival, the “Arnold Classic,” every spring since 1989. It now pulls in tens of thousands of athletes and fans and briefly turns downtown into one enormous gym.
The bronze first went up in 2012 outside the old Veterans Memorial, then moved to its current spot at the Convention Center in 2014. Get close and it earns the look: the hair, the grimace, the frankly ridiculous musculature, all rendered with a completely straight face. There’s a plaque with the backstory and one of Arnold’s own quotes, and yes, people leave the occasional flower at his bronze feet.
It’s free, it’s out on the sidewalk 24 hours a day, and it takes about ninety seconds to appreciate, most of which you’ll spend hunting for the angle that makes him look even bigger. Then again, you don’t have to rush. He’ll be back.
