Tonya Knight

Tonya Knight, born on March 24, 1966, in Peculiar, Missouri, and died on February 7, 2023, was an American professional bodybuilder. She played volleyball and softball in school and got into bodybuilding as a teenager after seeing Rachel McLish on a magazine cover. She did her first bodybuilding show as a high school senior and earned the right to turn pro at only 19 after winning an amateur contest in Japan. She finished fourth in the 1988 Ms. Olympia, but she later admitted sending a surrogate to take a mandatory drug test administered before the event, and in a ruling in November 1989 she was suspended and stripped of her 1989 Ms. International title, which went to runner-up Jackie Paisley.