Tongues wag over Rice’s workouts

WASHINGTON – Never let them see you sweat? Yeah, right.

Condoleezza Rice, the nation’s top diplomat, is appearing in a three-part TV interview in which she rides a bike, works on her abs, pumps iron and talks about her weight.

Public figures usually don’t go public when they work on their figures, though when they do, it can help humanize their images. President Bush is sometimes photographed trying to stay fit on his bike, and President Clinton took some high-profile jogs.

But secretaries of state, a job most people associate with the stiff, inscrutable language of diplomacy? Three days on TV in the gym?

Hard to picture her predecessors Colin Powell or Madeleine Albright doing the same. How about Warren Christopher? Alexander Haig? Not likely.

Samantha von Sperling, a New York-based image consultant whose customers include politicians was skeptical. She admires Rice, but finds this all to be a bit “Oprah-esque.”

“It just strikes me as, what’s the point?” she said. “Why do I need to see her in Spandex? It has nothing to do with the quality of her mind. And if she were a man, they wouldn’t have asked her to do the story.”

Others argued that given the nation’s weight problem, some role modeling couldn’t hurt.

“It’s enormously encouraging to other folks who have very busy lives,” said Alicia Moag-Stahlberg, executive director of Action for Healthy Kids, a coalition of more than 40 health and education agencies.

For a Bush administration that tries so hard to stay on message, this one is clear: If Rice makes time for exercise as one of the busiest people in the world, so can almost anyone.

The first segment aired Wednesday on Washington’s NBC affiliate. Now all the people working on their belt line inside the Beltway can see how the secretary of state does it.

Rice gets up at 4:30 a.m. She exercises every day, no matter where in the world she is. The interview shows her in the State Department gym, sweating in ordinary workout clothes.

There’s nothing diplomatic about it, really. As her boss, President Bush, might say, it’s hard work.

At one point, Rice is on a mat, isolating her abdominal muscles, listening as her ex-Marine trainer tells her to find the right balance. Apparently, Rice knows all about that.

“When I’m on the road, I absolutely schedule time to get up in the morning and exercise first,” Rice said.