Ask any bodybuilding fan which is the most inspiring division on the Olympia Weekend and you will get the same answer: Wheelchair Olympia.
Harold Kelley won the inaugural contest in 2018 and six of the first seven. He sat out 2025, and James Berger became only the third man to win it.
Every champion, 2018 to 2025
3 champions have won it across 8 contests
| Year | Champion | Country | Runner-up |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2025 |  James Berger | United States | Kevin Secundino |
| 2024 |  Harold Kelley ×6 | United States | Kevin Secundino |
| 2023 | Karol Milewski | Poland | Harold Kelley |
| 2022 | Harold Kelley ×6 | United States | Gabriele Andriulli |
| 2021 | Harold Kelley ×6 | United States | Gabriele Andriulli |
| 2020 | Harold Kelley ×6 | United States | Antoni Khadraoui |
| 2019 | Harold Kelley ×6 | United States | Gabriele Andriulli |
| 2018 | Harold Kelley ×6 | United States | Anand Arnold |
Runner-up sourced from 77 recorded placings. Updates automatically.
Every Wheelchair Olympia champion
Harold Kelley6 titles · United States- Karol Milewski1 title · Poland
- James Berger1 title · United States
Wheelchair athletes are judged on upper body development alone, and the criteria shift with the athlete: competitors with higher lumbar injuries (L1, L2 and L3) are not judged on lower back or abdominal development.
2018-2022 and 2024: Harold Kelley
Harold “King Kong” Kelley is the most dominant wheelchair bodybuilder the sport has had, with six Olympia titles and six Arnold Classics. Size, shape, separation and definition, all of it a level above the field.
He won the first contest in Las Vegas convincingly, with Indian bodybuilder Anand Arnold second and Ludovic Marchand of France third.
He repeated in 2019, where Italy’s Gabriele Andriulli announced himself as the man most likely to trouble him, and again in 2020 in Orlando.
The fourth, in 2021, came with Andriulli pushing him harder than anyone had. Ronnie Coleman presented that trophy from his own wheelchair, weeks after spine surgery. The same weekend, Jen Pasky Jaquin became the first female wheelchair athlete to earn an IFBB Pro Card.
2022 mattered more than the identical podium suggests: Andriulli had beaten Kelley at the Arnold Classic earlier that year. Kelley held the Olympia anyway, and took the Arnold title back in 2023 for a sixth.
After losing the title in 2023 he came back bigger and harder in 2024 and was undeniable.
2023: Karol Milewski
Milewski’s first pro show was the 2022 Arnold Classic UK, where he took bronze in a stacked lineup. He won the 2023 Sheru Classic UK Pro next.
His V-taper and conditioning are what separate him, and on his Olympia debut they were enough. He beat Kelley by a single point, becoming the second man to win the division and the first to beat Kelley on an Olympia stage. It was one of the biggest upsets of the 2023 weekend.
2025: James Berger
With Kelley absent, 2025 was wide open and several competitors peaked for it. The finals came down to Kevin Secundino and James Berger, and Berger’s arms, chest and back detail settled it. Third champion in eight years.
History of the division
Wheelchair bodybuilding is older than most people assume. The NPC ran the first Wheelchair Nationals in 1994.
The first IFBB Pro wheelchair contest was staged at the 2011 IFBB Houston Pro, and the division grew steadily from there: onto the Arnold Classic in 2016, and onto the Olympia in 2018. Kelley has won the Arnold every year bar 2022, when Andriulli took it.
Nick Scott, chairman and CEO of Wheelchair Bodybuilding, is the reason it reached those stages. He also narrates the stage introductions at the Olympia, telling how each athlete came to wheelchair life.
The Wheelchair Olympia runs on the second day of the weekend and is the only contest there with a single round. Its champion is crowned in the morning session rather than at the evening finals.
Who is eligible
Per NPC News Online, competitors “must primarily use a wheelchair for at least 99% of their daily mobility needs. This means that their primary mode of movement and transportation should be the wheelchair. Athletes relying on crutches, canes, or prosthetics for daily mobility are not eligible to compete in the wheelchair division.”
The NPC and IFBB Pro League keep a full list of qualifying conditions behind that, ten rules and criteria in total, which an athlete has to satisfy before being approved to compete.
