Arnold Schwarzenegger Is Back, Bigger Than Ever in Ohio

In California, he is the 64-year-old ex-governator, well past his bodybuilding prime, off the political stage, and shadowed by his affair with a maid and his split with his wife, Maria Shriver.

But in Columbus, Ohio, Arnold Schwarzenegger is a youthful, larger-than-life bronze muscled icon—and the talk of the town.

On Friday, an 8-foot-4, 580-pound bronze statue of Mr. Schwarzenegger was unveiled outside the Franklin County Veterans Memorial to kick off the city’s 24th annual weeklong sports competition starring Mr. Schwarzenegger, the Arnold Sports Festival.

The statue depicts a young Mr. Schwarzenegger at the peak of his bodybuilding career, his hair flowing and muscles bulging in a competitive pose. Donated to the city by a Chicago doctor and Schwarzenegger friend, the figure stands on the front lawn of Veterans Memorial, with a ring of lights to be installed around the base to illuminate it at night.

After a first oversize Arnold statue was unveiled last year at an Austrian museum dedicated to Mr. Schwarzenegger’s life, hosts and organizers of Columbus’s Arnold Sports Festival approached Mr. Schwarzenegger about getting a duplicate for Veterans Memorial, the convention and concert center that hosts the festival.

Both the Austrian and Columbus statues are based on a 22-inch statuette of Mr. Schwarzenegger created in 1979 by Idaho artist Ralph Crawford. Mr. Schwarzenegger hired Mr. Crawford to sculpt the statuette. Mr. Schwarzenegger, then a 32-year-old bodybuilding champion, chose the stance for the statue based on a competitive pose he perfected.

Mr. Schwarzenegger posed for Mr. Crawford for several days in a studio, flexing while Mr. Crawford took photos and measurements to get exact proportions. Mr. Crawford made a clay mold and after some tweaks, Mr. Schwarzenegger approved it.

Eventually, Mr. Schwarzenegger bought the rights to the statuette from Mr. Crawford so he could have copies made to be used as trophies in bodybuilding contests. Mr. Crawford said he later created a 4-foot-tall version of the statuette for Mr. Schwarzenegger’s home.

Mr. Schwarzenegger then commissioned an 8-foot-tall version after the Austrian museum approached him about acquiring a prominent statue for display in the country of his birth.

Mr. Crawford obliged, sculpting a larger clay model of his statuette that artist Timothy Parks then molded to recreate the bronze statue at a foundry in Oregon. Mr. Parks is a Schwarzenegger fan whose voice-mail message is a takeoff on a famous line from “The Terminator”: “I’ll be back.” (Mr. Parks said he had that message on his phone even before he got the Arnold job). He assembled the sculpture and then rubbed in a bronze patina to highlight and define the musculature.

The Columbus statue “is recognition of what Arnold has done in this community over 42 years,” said Jim Lorimer, who has been promoting sports events with Mr. Schwarzenegger since the 1970s.

Mr. Schwarzenegger’s relationship with Columbus began in 1970, when Mr. Lorimer, a local sports promoter, persuaded the bodybuilding champion, then 23 years old, to travel to the city for the new Mr. World competition. Mr. Lorimer and Mr. Schwarzenegger became partners in promoting bodybuilding competitions.

As Mr. Schwarzenegger became a big movie star, the Columbus event grew well beyond bodybuilding. Now, the event attracts 18,000 athletes competing across the city in everything from gymnastics to archery. It draws 175,000 attendees and generates $42 million for the local economy, according to the city’s visitors’ bureau.

Mr. Schwarzenegger, who has returned to acting, hasn’t missed a year of the festival, even as California’s governor, flying into Columbus to judge events, host fund-raisers for after-school fitness programs and dine at an Italian chain with his equally statuesque actor friend Sylvester Stallone. A famous statue of Mr. Stallone, as Rocky Balboa, stands outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art.

The Arnold statue is “fahn-taah-steek,” said self-professed “hard-core Arnold fan” and Columbus native Ryan Gillen. “It shows how much Columbus means to him, and how much he means to Columbus.”

“We’re hoping this will become our Rocky statue and surpass the level of the Rocky statue,” said Scott Peacock of the city’s visitors bureau. Mr. Peacock is betting inventive Ohioans will try to clothe Mr. Schwarzenegger to keep him warm during the winter. “It won’t be long before someone puts a hat or scarf on him, or maybe even a fur, like Conan [the Barbarian].”

Not everyone is enthusiastic.

“Can we trade Philly for their Rocky statue? We’d rather have that,” said Elizabeth Lessner, who lives in Columbus and owns five restaurants there. She thinks Columbus is an ill-chosen home for the figure. “We don’t dress in tiny shorts and flex. That’s Florida or California,” she said.

Ms. Lessner said she and other business people are grateful for the boost from the Arnold event, but chefs around town “kind of groan when the Arnold people come in. All they order are like seven chicken breasts and a side of steamed broccoli. It’s a tough time for us culinary-wise.”

Some war veterans object to the statue’s location.

“He doesn’t deserve a statue of him in front of a veterans’ memorial. He is not a U.S. veteran, period,” said Hugh Berry III, a U.S. Navy and Marine veteran who served during Vietnam and the first Persian Gulf War.

Mr. Berry, adjutant of VFW Post 4931 outside Columbus, said he’s a fan of Mr. Schwarzenegger’s movies and admires his support of veterans.

“I love the man dearly,” Mr. Berry said, adding he once met Mr. Schwarzenegger at a welcome-home event for Persian Gulf veterans in California. Still, he and about 200 other VFW members signed a petition against the placement of Mr. Schwarzenegger’s statue.

Mr. Schwarzenegger’s supporters note that as an actor and politician he has supported veterans, donating money to causes, and visiting wounded soldiers.

The Arnold statue was a “business decision” that “will add to the curb appeal” of the memorial grounds, said John P. Raphael, chairman of the Veterans Memorial Board of Trustees.

Through a spokesman, Mr. Schwarzenegger said when he compares himself today to the youthful the statue, he wonders “what happened.”

At the unveiling Friday, the flesh and blood Mr. Schwarzenegger—215 pounds and 6-foot-1—stood in a charcoal gray suit and red-striped tie, next to his larger-than-life, nearly naked bronze. The figure is based on his 32-year-old self, when he was 235 pounds and measured half an inch taller.

In a speech before the unveiling, Mr. Schwarzenegger said he was proud to have his statue at a veterans’ memorial. “No country, no dictatorship, no empire, no feudal system has ever been as powerful and as important as the United States, and it is all because of the brave men and women who fought,” he said to a cheering crowd. “Thank you very much and I’ll be back.”