Joanna Clare Dawson Thomas (12 December 197626 April 2020) was a British professional female bodybuilder. She was the younger sister of British professional female bodybuilder Nicola Shaw. She was the youngest British female bodybuilder to win her IFBB pro card, at the age of 21.
Early life
Thomas was born on 12 December 1976, in Truro, Cornwall, England, United Kingdom, the second of three children. Her father is a painter and decorator and her mother is a farm worker. She grew up in Camborne, Cornwall. At the age of 14, she was groomed by one of her parents' lodgers and he had a sexual relationship with her.
She became interested in bodybuilding at age 14 when she saw a bodybuilding magazine that belonged to a college student who was staying with her family. While Thomas was a chronic asthmatic since childhood and was unable to do any sort of strenuous physical activities at a young age, she became inspired by the way women looked and knew she wanted to someday be like them. Thomas was very shy at a young age and did not pursue her desire to become a bodybuilder until she felt comfortable enough to do it.
In 1993, she graduated from the Camborne Science and International Academy. Soon afterward she began training as a nurse.
Bodybuilding career
Amateur
At age 14, the Thomas went to a nearby gym. The gym owner's wife dismissed her goal of building muscle by saying it should be left to the men, however, her husband began to train her. He gave her a training plan of a 3 splits routine a week while eating only 3 meals a day and no supplements. She soon discovered she had great genetics for bodybuilding and quickly grew out of her asthma. She followed the training plan for two years and gained , including putting on of muscle with that program. Thomas remarked, "Within six months of training I was the only girl in my gym class that could do proper push-ups". She began to seriously get into bodybuilding at the age of 15.
By the time Joanna Thomas turned 17 years old, bodybuilding had become a lifestyle for her and her sister, Nicola Thomas, who like her also became inspired to become a bodybuilder. According to her mother, she started to go to a local gym when she was 17, but began "obsessive weight training". By this time she had decided that she was going to become a competitive bodybuilder and set her sights on becoming a professional in the field of bodybuilding.
From the age of 17 to age 20 she began competing to become a professional to win the British Championships. In 1997, at age 20, she finished third in the championship finals. In that contest, her sister Nicola became the first lightweight to win the overall title and pro card (Nicola retired without competing as a professional). In 1998, she moved to Manchester, England to train at the gym Betta Bodies, and began taking anabolic steroids. She got help training from the gym owner, Kerry Kayes, along with Diane Royle. She was also sponsored by a supplement company, Chemical Nutrition. She won the British Championships in 1998, becoming the youngest woman in the world at that time to win an IFBB pro card.
Professional
1998-2003
At that point, Thomas felt that her physique needed substantial improvement before she could compete successfully as a professional, so she did not compete again until 2001. Thomas completed her two years of nursing school around this time, but she eventually stopped going to school to concentrate on her bodybuilding career. During this time she moved to the United States to compete in the IFBB shows. She entered the 2001 Jan Tana Classic and won the lightweight class; there was no overall champion for Jan Tana that year which made her a co-champion with the other female bodybuilders who won their classes. This became her first victory as a professional. This also qualified her for her first Ms. Olympia in 2001. Before attending the Olympia, Steve Wennerstrom, a friend of hers, invited her to stay in his place in San Diego, California, to prepare for the Ms. Olympia competition. In 2001 Ms. Olympia, she would place 10th in the light-weight class.