Barack Obama's impressive physique is the talk of the web, after he became the latest world leader to be photographed without a shirt.
The US president-elect candidate revealed his muscular pectoral muscles and flat stomach while on holiday in Hawaii ahead of his inauguration next month.
But while Mr Obama's shapely frame is testament to his daily fitness routine, other bare-chested premiers left an altogether less impressive mark on the public consciousness.
Tony Blair was pictured topless while on holiday in the Caribbean in 2006, displaying the body of a man who had spent nearly 10 years enjoying the hospitality at diplomatic receptions and state banquets.
His French counterpart Nicholas Sarkozy also looked a little overweight when photographed paddling a canoe on holiday in the US last year, although readers of Paris Match were not to know.
The magazine retouched the images to remove his love handles, or tighten his "poignees d'amour" as the French say.
Perhaps the only world leader with a body to rival Mr Obama's is Vladimir Putin, the former Russian president who stripped off while on a fishing trip in the Siberian mountains. Photos of his barrel chest and rugged arms, which were posted on the Kremlim website, burnished his image as a political and physical strongman.
(As published in Telgraph.UK 3:01PM GMT 23 Dec 2008)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/barackobama/3917954/Barack-Obama-shirtless-Best-of-the-world-leaders.html
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
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