The Sevan Podcast - #358 - Quarterfinals Leaderboard is A MESS ft. Brian Friend

Episode Date: April 4, 2022

The one and only Brian Friend joins use to talk about the CrossFit Games Quarterfinal Leaderboard situation. ------------------------- Partners: https://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK! https://www.barbelljobs.com/ - WORLD'S #1 JOB BOARD FOR THE CROSSFIT COMMUNITY https://thesevanpodcast.com/ - OUR WEBSITE https://sogosnacks.com/ - SAVE15 coupon code - the snacks my kids eat - tell them Sevan sent you! https://www.hybridathletics.com/produ... - THE BARBELL BRUSH Support the show Partners: https://cahormones.com/ - CODE "SEVAN" FOR FREE CONSULTATION https://www.paperstcoffee.com/ - THE COFFEE I DRINK! https://asrx.com/collections/the-real... - OUR TSHIRTS ... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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there we go there we go guys i want to say something real quick before we dig into the fun part of the show. You could go to YouTube and see that we have 12,000 subscribers. A lot of people in the, I can't think of anyone in the ecosystem who actually has less subscribers than us. I think everyone almost has double, triple, quadruple. There's people like Craig Ritchie who have like 10 times as much as us. No, 30 times. I think he's got like 300,000 subscribers. Talking Elite Fitness guy's got 30,000 subscribers. Someone like Kalipa, even though he's not necessarily in the podcast space 55 000 subscribers josh bridges up over 100 000 oh i'd be curious to know velner she started his this week

oh yeah let's go look let's look oh yeah you don't do that i do that i'm putting my socks on you have to know this and and everyone knows this too who's paying attention we have no peer number of views don't get confused by the youtube numbers and they know it the views on itunes and on spotify on the podcast platforms we're like a hundred times over our next closest competitor they're massive i've posted them before you can go through and find it and that was six months ago you can only imagine what they are now my point is this our sponsors though all of those people have big sponsors and are making a fucking killing not all a lot we are not and why are we not well you can guess you can guess why sponsors because they're pussies they're woke fake fucking pussies and so the sponsors that we do have support them they're cool shit they're doing it because they're they're not afraid of the truth

what is the truth just in in the essence the truth for starting is just not being confused of what are your thoughts and what's in reality the fact that you're you have a dog at your house that's reality the fact that you think your you have a dog at your house, that's reality. The fact that you think your dog is pretty, that's not truth. Hey, well, what's up? You on the show? It will. Did you see what, Oh, you can't see it. Anyway. I'm really thankful to our sponsors, barbelljobs.com, the barbell brush, Rob Orlando, paper street coffee and California hormones. And in the past, it's been the real buff dude.

If you like your barbell, you should get that barbell brush. The bronze tip one. It's incredible. We don't even, Brian would never say that, by the way, unless he really meant it. Like, I'm not like, hey, make sure you plug the, make sure you plug the. That's the sound of a 360 degree barbell brush by Hybrid Athletics. sound of a 360 degree barbell brush by hybrid athletics uh if you guys have not read this article that brian wrote for the morning morning chalk up you should go if you don't have a lot of time to listen to brian and i fool around this morning that's the article everything is there it

is fucking good i read it and it was like a crash course on what we're about to talk about also go over and check out uh andrew hiller's uh most recent um video i normally don't have patience for that shit at all but man he really he really breaks it down and neither of these pieces have any negativity i felt no anger towards the games after reading this i felt no anger towards the games after watching andrew hiller's piece these are just videos that are these are just pieces that are just kind of showing you what's going on i felt no venom no venom towards the host if they actually felt like help i want to just start with i'm gonna sort of start at the at the at the orgasm and then we'll work our way back to the foreplay brian is there anyone who who you think because of the scoring did not make it to semifinals.

It's funny that you use that description. I had an epic – Orgasm last night? No, that you want to start with the – I had an epic disc golf match with my brother, and I was telling a friend about it, and he goes – I go, we had this incredible match. It was great. He goes, who won?

I'm like, what? You don't want to hear the story? You want to know who won before all the drama along the way? uh yes i think that the answer to that question is yes wow and so that can't be right it is i mean as of now that is the case okay um explain to us um explain to us explain to us what happened. Basically, there is this event. How many people – do we know how many people were involved in the quarterfinals? Men, let's just say.

I think, I mean – Roughly. I think about 15,000 people ended up participating in quarterfinals around the world. Men and women or just men? Men and women. Okay. So just to give you guys an idea of how this event works this event most of you already know there's 15 000 participants in it it's online the 15 000 participants are separated by region how many regions five six

six and based on just the way the plan is laid out you know like north america south america shit like that there was about 7 300 men total who participated continue i'm working on the women and and then so they did they do this online competition and it's five events and the 5 300 women great so very close to what you were saying okay so 12 600 men and women combined uh all over the planet they enter this event it's called the quarterfinals over the planet they enter this event it's called the quarterfinals and the top people from this event from each region move on to what is called the semifinals and then from there they move on to the crossfit games there was an event this year event number three that for a variety of reasons the athletes did the events wrong let's stick primarily to that the athletes did the events wrong. Let's stick primarily to that. The athletes

did the events wrong, that the scoring was messed up. And so that scoring has to be validated by the judging body and that judging body is CrossFit HQ. What happens is that if you get, if you're, let's say you took 10th place legitimately, but there's a hundred people who got a faster time from you that's not legitimate, it would push you down a hundred places, just common sense, right? And so if you're supposed to be in 10th and a hundred people got in between ninth and 10th because of their scores were higher than yours,

but they were illegitimate scores. It would push you down to 110th and you might not move to the second round. And this is something that Brian has spotted. And so Brian, how did you, how do you spot something like this? What's the, Brian, how do you spot something like this? What's the first thing that happens when you spot something like this? And this is a vendor.

Will, good morning. Will, you can bring up – sorry, Brian. You can bring up whatever you want. Good morning, Will. Nice to have you. Good morning. Thank you. Will, nice to see you. This happens in every event of every online competition that I've ever seen in CrossFit is that at some point while the leaderboard is populated, there's a score near the top or multiple scores near the top that look out of place.

And it can happen for a lot of different reasons. I remember early on when I was doing CrossFit Open in 2014 and 15, that people would do it as a joke. They'd post a picture or a video of themselves in a kilt doing whatever in five minutes on a workout where the next best time is 14 minutes. And that would last for a couple hours. People would see it, screenshot it, blah, blah, blah, cross it, remove it. There's other times. This year we've seen where people are doing it for political movement, make a statement, put a score up there and put their flag from Estonia or Ukraine or whatever and say, hey, check out this video about what's going on in my part of the world. We want you guys to bring it. So they're using it to bring attention to their platform.

There's other times that the score is populated and it's someone who thinks that they've done the workout correctly and not realizing that they didn't do it correctly. And that's where CrossFit's main responsibility is to come in and see that video and make the appropriate adjustments based on the rules that they've outlined in the rule book. In the case of the rule book right now, we have basically four options. When they see a video, they can approve the video. They can give a minor penalty, a major penalty, or they can invalidate the video. Oh, they can do that. Those are the, I think those are the four options outlined in the rule book.

Yeah. And it seems like there maybe should be some there and maybe and actually are some um like levels within the minor and especially major penalties because we saw sometimes there's major penalties assessed for one minute two minutes three minutes on the same workout sorry brian i think i misunderstood something you're saying the games can assess those penalties not viewers they don't ask the viewers games okay so if i'm watching something and i see it there's not a place for me to push a button and send an alert to hq like hey something's wrong here no but i think that there used to be a platform where

people could do that okay they could see videos and if people flagged the video enough people flagged the video then crossers like that's a high percentage of flags on that video let's check that video out and i think that that's one of the things hiller's been talking about bringing back why not have that if this is a task that's too big for you to do on your own with your team then use the community that you have at your disposal and let them alert you of things that look unusual right so that's where we're at. So you saw those. So you asked me, how could I notice these? So, you know, really the, you know, what we can do right now, I, you know, we should just pull up the leaderboard cause it's still is very unusual at the top of the leaderboard for this workout. And you can choose either men or women, and we can sort by the

worldwide rankings probably for, we can just sort by worldwide for women. And here we can see at the top first, this is really good. Actually at the top of this leaderboard, we see Michaela Norman. Michaela Norman's a well-known athlete in the space. She's very good at some things. She has some obvious and clear weaknesses relative to her strengths and other things. She won this workout worldwide, according to this. Uh, and that's easy to believe she's very tall. She's good at wall balls. She's good at rope climbs. She's good at running. This is a workout I would think she would do great. She's not very strong. So 1,073rd on the lifting worldwide does not surprise me. She's not very good at ring muscle-ups. So 583rd in the world in workout two, not surprising. Even though it looks a little unusual that she would be first when she could be that relatively bad in other

workouts, she's a very specific athlete that we know of who actually just has these incredible strengths. She's beaten Sam Briggs in running through desert workouts in Dubai. She's regularly doing well on longer time domain workouts. Number two, Gabby McGawa, we don't need to talk about. Number three, Tia Clartume, we don't need to talk about. We'd expect them to be good at almost everything, and the rankings show that. Number four is the first person we see in here where I would say,

how can this possibly be her score? She only did two of the workouts, and one of the workouts she did was with the strength one where she got 2700th, and then the only other workout she did, she got fourth here. So at the very least, if I'm working for the CrossFit Games team, I would say, Alicia, I need to see your video for workout three. What did you say the other one she got? What place?

I don't see the other one she did. It's right there, 2,728th in workout four. Oh, okay, including number three, she only did two. Right. Okay, my bad. Now, I don't know what the ruling is for athletes that only do two of the five workouts, but apparently those workouts are allowed to factor into the leaderboard here. And so in that case, Alicia Christie Rodway's video should definitely be reviewed.

And what I understand about how that review system works is it 100% definitely would have been reviewed anyway, because I believe that they review all the videos of the qualifying positions. Like if there's, I'm not 100% sure of this, but if there's i'm not 100 sure of this but if there's 60 spots that qualify in europe i think they would review at least the top 60 on each workout right at least i would hope that you know that would be like a minimum that they would do so she's you know we can look there and see tia's not in europe but michaela and gabby are so she would still also be third in europe so this video should have been reviewed now what it says in the article is what uh adrian bosman reported to morning chalk up is that they a lot of these athletes who had really good scores on this workout probably did the workout

incorrectly may not have expected to have a top score on this workout so crossfit hq or whatever review committee would reach out to them and give them a couple extra days to provide the video. And if they couldn't provide the video, then his quote up there said, unable to verify via video. We'll have adjustments made before the leaderboard is final. That's from the article that you wrote. Correct.

Okay. Now can I fall into the weeds here for a second? Sure. And if you want to skip over this, we come back to it i won't forget how can they give leeway to give people time to turn in a video but they wouldn't give a 12 minute leeway to annika gareer who contacted them at 12 12 p.m 12 minutes afterwards how can they give two days to turn in a video to validate a score but they can't give this young lady 12 minutes or something that she, she claims she already did.

Obviously it doesn't sound very good when you say it that way, but I think that their response would be, we clearly communicated that there would be no grace for submissions that were late. We didn't clearly communicate one way or the other, how to handle a situation like that. I'll cut them slack for that. Okay.

So you don't have to turn in a video. Correct. But if they ask for it and you can't provide it okay that's fair i'm cool with that then they can then i will right okay okay they will have adjustments made before the leaderboard is final now that i'll give christian and more than a pass on that i'll give him an a on that i'm cool with that that's fine now, that communication from him came on Friday morning before the leaderboard was finalized that evening. Because I had already aggregated a list of nearly 200 names out of the top 500 men and women in Europe and North America that I thought were probably worth reviewing. And of those 200, what was the lowest placing of those in the worldwide leaderboard? Or in their region, what was their lowest ranking in their region? Do you know?

Yeah, so I looked at the top 150 men and women from North America on this workout and the top 100 men and women from Europe on this workout because there's about two thirds of the number of participants in Europe compared to North America, which is a total of 500. And of those 500, I thought that 142 were almost definitely inaccurate scores and that another 44 could possibly also be. and that another 44 could possibly also be. I was less confident of those, and I really was only making that assessment based on their other scores and or name recognition, of which I know quite a few people who compete in this sport. So that means that every single one of those scores, except for if someone claimed they took first place,

would affect everyone else's placement when the scores were adjusted. So I think this is the thing that gets confusing for people. Yeah, it is confusing. I agree. You say like, well, Alicia Christie Rodway is in third place in Europe. If you take her score out, everyone behind her is going to move up a point and it's not going to affect the overall points. That's true. It affects the person on the bottom. It brings them into the fold.. That's true. It affects the person on the bottom. It brings them into the fold. Because she's in third, it affects every single person other than Gabby McGowan and Michaela Norman. Right.

So everyone will just move up one spot. So what her score does is it inflates all the scores. So all the scores are higher. Which is bad. That's not what you want. No. But her score is as bad as it appears to be on the leaderboard relative to other performances, um, is not really the problem. If that score stays there, then everyone's score is just inflated by one and it doesn't have that much of an effect on the cut line.

If you want to see what's going to happen at the cut line, which is really why we're talking about this because it's, uh, there have been many athletes around the world who have reported that they are sitting outside the cut line when they feel they could probably, or should probably be inside the cut line because of the high number of inaccurate scores in this workout. So for, uh, in this to really do this, what you have to do is you have to go to the overall ranking by continent, and then scroll down to where the cut line is. So, you know, we can stay with the European women if you want. You can find examples like this for every region. But if you go down here, 60th is the cut line. And we see the woman in 60th placed 167th on this workout.

Behind her, a woman placed 158th, 61, 221. So now I'd start to look at this 221. Her name's Katerina Issel from Germany, and she had scores on other workouts of 123, 113, 19, and 53rd. So this is her worst score of the five scores that comes on this workout. And you look at the people that are ahead of her. Valentina was 61st on that workout. So there's a huge opportunity for anyone who has ranked 62nd to 220th to be inflating Katerina's score on this workout and not influencing his Valentina's score. So every person between 62 and 220 who may have done this workout inaccurately is hurting Katerina relative to Valentina. Gotcha. Gotcha.

The window's more narrow for Amiko because she was 158. So you'd have to look at videos 159 through 220 to see who's affecting the gap there. It's only a 10-point gap. It's only a 12-point gap to 60th. So if there happen to be 12 invalid scores between numbers 168 and 220 on this workout, Katerina would jump all three of those athletes and move into the last qualifying spot. Now, that's a ton to ask for CrossFit to be reviewing videos number 168 through 220 on this leaderboard. We're not asking them to review every video. What we're asking them for is to look at the ones that seem to be uh out of place

and if it out of place you don't have to watch the whole video even what we saw and what andrew someone would have to care i don't mean that in a mean way i don't i do i know that comes across bad but someone would have to care we've all seen like you've been outside let's say a starbucks and an employee shows up and there's cups on the ground and they don't pick them up as they come in. Now, if that's your house, you do that every time, right? That's how you know you're an adult. Like if I come home and there's some garbage in front of my house, I pick it up and throw it away. Starbucks, someone would have to care.

Well, I think what we've seen and have the time. I know someone like Adrian Bosman cares cares a lot but does he have the time does he have the time him i mean him personally to do that do they have the resources to do this yeah that well that's that's the question and that's the thing that i um uh have been coming back to a lot this weekend as i've been thinking about it is there needs to be a solution that provides them with the resources so that they can do something like this. Now, stepping even further back, what would be much better is if, you know, we didn't have a problem like this. And one of the reasons why, you know, and we've talked about this on the show before, problems like this happen is because they're constantly changing the rules, introducing new

things. There's not a rule book that explains all the movements prior to the season starting, et cetera, et cetera. And while that concept of unknown and unknowable is fun to talk about, sometimes in certain formats, especially it creates problems. So this is a movement we've never seen before. That's being communicated to a global population that speaks hundreds of different languages and, and are in tons of different situations because of, you know, COVID. This just became biblical.

This just became biblical. I like it. Well, whatever. It's just. It's the Tower of Babel story. Well, and a lot of people are saying, you know, this is on the athletes and the judges that should have been able to read this. Yes, for sure. That should be the responsibility.

Yeah, but maybe to do the workout correctly is on the athletes i'm not going to deny that but once the scores are in it's it's i mean yeah and then the cross is collecting the money they need to vote they need to be able to validate or invalidate the scores completely agree or else it's not a competition we're just talking about defining what a competition is, the definition of a competition. Right. And I guess there's a presumption there that it's fair. Hey, something weird here that someone is saying, and I really don't want to beat a dead horse, but I just can't resist. It's this, Alyssa Larson says this. So if Anika would have put in a score of one minute with no video for the

last while, that would have been better than missing the deadline. So you could literally sign up for the quarterfinals and just insert all your scores wrong, just to hold your place. You know what I mean? Well, yeah.

And I think that, you know, a lot of people's frustration with this is stemming from other problems that have already happened this year, whether it's the case of Monica Greer and those athletes in Europe, and people are frustrated with that, the early release of the workouts, the unclear burpee standard that has a written this and a verbal that. And it's like, once you have one, two, three, four mistakes, each one of those becomes amplified more and more. And then you start comparing them to each other. And it's

just not a very clean administration of the season so far on CrossFit's end. Yeah, a cascade. Yeah, it would be cool to let people who took the judges course be able to volunteer to look at videos on their own time. Yeah, a lot of people had said that for this quarterfinal workout, you had to have a judge that would completed the judges course, validate your video. It would also be nice if those judges had read the standards and communicator athletes down and back as one. So, you know, you could look at that both ways. Wow. I didn't even think about that. I wonder how bad those judges feel. that. I wonder how bad those judges feel. Yeah. And I mean, look, it's a seeming, it seems to be that a lot, like a lot of, a lot of judges and athlete combinations made this mistake.

And that's why I would, you know, I would, you know, when I'm writing the rules for the quarter finals, I would be sitting there as the competition committee saying, okay, we're introducing the shuttle run. Are we confident that this is going to be executed? Well, okay. We're going to have pistols in this workout. Are we confident that we can judge a pistol standard? Well, or whatever the movements are like, that needs to be part of the conversation because it's not the semifinals and it's not the games. It's not happening live.

And it's a huge population of global people that are doing this workout, these workouts. Will, could you pull up the, the, the morning chocolate article that Brian wrote? For those of you at home, go ahead and we can judge this now together. I think this is a direct quote from the rule book, and this isn't the morning chalk up article. One repetition of the shuttle run equals down the length of the competition floor and back. equals down the length of the competition floor and back.

So that lets you know it has to be, so then you have to do the math, right? 25 feet each direction. The shuttle run is 50 foot shuttle run and official scorecard reads one repetition of the shuttle run equals down the length of the competition floor and back. Do we have a picture or an image? is there something online that shows the scorecard yeah and that i mean that line is taken directly from it yeah that's crazy

so um further on this this this gets a little unsettling this is the unsettling part of the article um did you speak or morning chalkup spoke to an athlete who says i did the workout wrong you need to invalidate my score that's in quotes they communicated that to who to their judge in the gym or to cross their judge in the gym okay and the judge this was at so he you remember the leaderboard stays hidden until the submission deadline closes. So after the window closes, there's a certain amount of time that passes before CrossFit populates it.

When the leaderboard populates it, everyone who did the workout goes and checks and see how they did. This guy went and checked how they did on the workout and he's like, oh man, I did really well on that workout. That seems wrong. Then he's read the rule book and he saw, I actually only did half the shuttle runs every time he texted his judge. I did that wrong. You need to invalidate my score because he saw what my score scores way higher than it should be. And it's affecting the leaderboard. And he said, I tried, I just tried to go on there. There's nowhere for me to invalidate it

because it's after the fact. So it's now in CrossFit's hands. And his response was, well, they'll watch it because he did have a video. And they'll be like, F this guy, of course. And he said, I didn't want to do this. I wouldn't do this on purpose. So he was trying to change it after the fact and could not, was relying on CrossFit to check those scores. And they did not. He was assuming they'd ask him for his video, which he had.

Bosman communicated to us that they would ask those athletes for those videos they did not ask him for this video is what he's told me is he a top guy is he in the top 20 yeah top 20 in north america for men oh shit so clearly is one of the scores that i would have assumed that bosman and the team had been asking for videos for based on the communication that we got from him. And yet he told me that they did not ask him for his score or for his video. And his score remains there inaccurate, which he does not want it to be. I've never even heard, I've never heard of that. Is that common sense that there would be a place where you could go back on and change your score?

I think after the submission deadline, a closes no way no okay okay okay so right so that's not and that and his judge went in to try to change the score after the deadline okay so that's not on hq at all um did anyone from his camp actually contact hq and say hey with this guy's this score's wrong he's uh he told me he attempted to and and the email never sent which you know of course doesn't sound okay so i'm gonna say no he didn't i'm gonna say no he didn't he did not he did not how but you know i still say that like his score was uh good enough that it definitely should have been requested a video per bosman's quote in the article and uh i asked him last night and he said they never asked me for my video

what do you what do you think about did you watch andrew hiller's videos yeah i've been talking to andrew throughout the weekend and working on him with some stuff and watched his stuff what is he doing so i know i know you're in the space you work for the morning chalk up you've been on here You've been on all the podcasts. You've been around since, I don't know how long you've been around now. Seems like you're just part of the scene. Where did this guy come from? He's been around a long time, too.

How come I just heard about him like three months ago? Well, because he was doing different stuff. I mean, he was focusing on competing as an athlete in the sport for a long time and he did make it to semi-finals last year and he's he did did you know of him then was he good enough for you yeah yeah i know of him by name he's also done some pretty incredible like feats of strength i think he did like a 225 grace or a 35 unbroken ring muscle ups like he has some pretty good um i think he's he's in very good shape now he's coaching more than training and he's got some extra time because he's not training. I think he's in very good shape. Now he's coaching more than training, and he's got some extra time because he's not training as often,

and he's passionate about pulling the standards, so he started putting some of this stuff together. I think that people who are – It's more than he's passionate about the standards. I mean, what he's doing takes crazy work. I mean, he's always expressing some sort of YouTube. He's spending hours and hours and hours a day working on this stuff. That video he made last night, that's maybe a 10-hour video.

That's not a joke. Getting all those clicks, maybe more. He's gotten better. He's gotten better. He said it used to take him on an average of six hours, and it gets down to two or three now sometimes. There's no way that last video, though, he made in two in two hours i'm telling you because the video alone is 15 minutes long and you know you should see the setup he has it's like an underground behind a waterfall i think

so so he's so we we have two things colliding with him we have a guy who um i i did i scanned you uh i we are having andrew hiller on the show i scheduled them uh july 18th 2022 look at the uh calendar i scheduled them up um so we have a guy who's like who's popped out of nowhere who has some creative some massive amount of creative energy that he's using to um to look at the scoring and he's and you know a good idea he's like hey if you guys see anything let me know and i'll report on it how come just the two of you is there anyone else doing this oh yeah there are some other people that have sent me some stuff that they're working on around the world um one guy i know in the UK actually like rescored the entire continent of or the relevant population of athletes for this workout and saw how much different it would be.

He said it's kind of crude because he hasn't seen any of the videos. But based on what it looks like is inaccurate scores, he made some adjustments and adjustments. And he said it actually changed the top 60 quite dramatically. Can't you do that really easily brian like you personally can't someone by easily i mean well yeah there's some things that could be yeah i don't think it would take that much time so the two things are like how come we don't have a new leaderboard to show everyone today why can't we just be like hey these people are out and these people are in like can you do that that? Well, can you point to someone right now on the board? If we'll pull it up and be like, you're out. I can point to someone on the board and say, this video should be the score on this video should be adjusted. Can, can you pull up the North American leader

board? Can you show what's the most atrocious? I'm sorry for whoever gets named for this. This has nothing to do with you, by the way. Can you pull up the most atrocious? Atrocious isn't the right word. Let me use that. Just go to North American men and sort by workout three. Okay. And we can see you immediately. And can you show me someone maybe who will be in the quarter,

who's in the quarterfinals now who won't be after their score is adjusted? Oh, so that's the thing. Most of the scores that are inaccurate here, those people are not relevant at all for qualifying for quarterfinals or for missing qualification. They're nowhere near it. We can look at Brian Sanchez there and Brian Sanchez videos actually on YouTube.

Hiller clipped it and put it in one of his videos. We cited it and linked it in the morning chalk up article. It's not very hard to find out that this guy did not do the correct number of shuttle runs in his workout. And you don't actually have to watch the whole video. Even you can just watch the first round, which takes less than a minute and see that he didn't do all the shuttle runs.

And then you could say, okay, we need to watch the rest of this video. If you watch someone and they do the first two rounds correctly, you can say, no, this is a good score. Keep it,

move on. So you don't have to take 30 minutes to watch all these videos. Anyway, let me just see if I understand what you're saying. The also what you're saying. Also, what you're saying is the scores that have been put in wrong because the workout was done wrong or for whatever reason, it's not that those people are in the quarterfinals or semifinals on accident. It's that they may have pushed out, not may have,

they have definitely pushed out some people who deserve to be in. Right, and so Brian Sanchez is in the case of that Alicia Rodway that we were talking about, where you take his score out and it affects almost no one in terms of their relative placement to other competitors they're battling for quarterfinal placements with. Because only Jeffrey Adler and Marshall Creed have better scores than him on this workout now. So again, his score is inflating the scores, but it's not showing an effect there. And by the way, you can just look at his other workouts and see 1100, 2000, 1800, 1100, third. So either this guy is freakishly good at this workout, like we talked

about with Michaela Norman, but we've never heard of him before. He hasn't done anything impressive like she has on a big stage like this before. Or we need to look at this guy's video. We can and have seen this guy's video. We know it's wrong, and yet his score has been finalized and approved by CrossFit. That's concerning. Well, and how do you know that?

How do you know it's been approved? Because the leaderboard's finalized, so all the scores are approved. Anything? Okay, okay okay okay so that's it's a huge swath of of so there's two things either the leaderboards finalized because they've reviewed everything and approved it or the leaderboards finalized and they have not reviewed everything but it's still approved because it's finalized ah the leaderboard's not finalized there's no way if what we're saying is true, which it clearly is. But they published on their own platforms that it's finalized and they sent out things to athletes who are in the qualifying positions asking for their preference and travel restrictions.

So those things have happened already. They're taking actions towards the next stage of competition and this one's in the rear view mirror. Will, can you pull up the North American leaderboard and rank it one through 120? So Brian, those top 120 are the ones who are going to the semifinals? Yeah. So if you want to see what's going on at the cut line here, then we have to go to the third page of the leaderboard. You're like Nostradamus. You know what I'm thinking before I'm thinking it. This episode is brought to you by PC Optimum. If you like a curated playlist, why not try a curated grocery list? With Swap and Save, the new feature in the PC Optimum app,

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So let's look at a person in 125th. His name is Will Bennett. Will Bennett is, I would say, a fringe semifinal athlete in North America. He's probably not going to finish in the top 50, but he could definitely make it. Now, I've already talked about the depth of the men's field. So obviously, in a certain year area he could also not make it. But look at his scores on his workouts. 149th, 140th, 193rd, 41st, 800th. Does something jump out as unusual to you?

Of course, 800th. Why is his score 800th on this workout? Is he that bad at those things? Maybe. But more than likely, there are somewhere between 50 and 300 invalid scores in this workout in the top 800. Oh my goodness.

And look at the people ahead of him. One six guys, 34 minutes into the show. I'm really starting to get this. It's like weird. Every time I, you've explained this to me like 10 times. And every time there's this moment where I get it.

So you look at gunner Reagan, he's one spot ahead of him. It's still not a qualifying spot, but it's a good example. Same with Skyler. Oh, yeah. Well, Skyler's in 611. So his score is probably also inflated.

And Will's score relative to Skyler's score would not change as much as Will's score could change relative to Gunnar's score because there's more opportunity for inaccurate scores. But again, are you going to review every video between one 66 and seven 99? No chance you're doing that.

That's just not going to happen. So we have to have a different plan for managing this stage of the season. That's actually something that CrossFit can do. Cause that's not, that's not going to happen. You're not going to look at all eight and 799 scores. Tyler, Tyler Watkins, given that last year someone who's

ranked 87th out of the corner finals made it to the games i count no one out he's basically yes and we know that bailey rail missed the qualifying got a backfill one qualified to the games and finishing the top 20 at the games it can obviously happen and this point is valid and this is what i wrote in the conclusion of the article that came out today is that all of these athletes who are competing for semi-final spots are very good and invest a lot of time and money all year for the opportunity to compete in the competition to express their capacity relative to their competitors not for the opportunity for some scores to be ignored or just forgotten at their expense what does this? What I was going to ask you, I want several to fact that and take a toke from the marijuana smoke.

That's just a rapper. That's just someone like expressing their poetry. I don't even know what that means. Okay. What's Taylor saying here? A Taylor self Parker. No one has received an invite to the semifinals. Yeah.

No one's received an invite yet. What they sent out to athletes who are in qualifying positions i don't know if they send them to all 120 athletes in north america if they've only sent it to a portion of them but at least some athletes have received something from crossfit that said what's your preference for competition during semifinals there's four semifinals in north america for them to rank and are do you have any travel restrictions for example i don't think you can compete at the Atlas games if you're not vaccinated. So if you're an American who's chosen not to get the vaccine and they seated

you in the Atlas games, you, I don't think you can travel to Canada without a vaccine. So. Segregation. Or whatever it is that that's the, you know, we're not talking about that. Now we're talking about. I can't believe you brought that up and ruined the show, Brian. Well, that's, you know, that's what's going on. Not that they've been invites sent out.

So surveys were Taylor calls them surveys. That's okay. So Taylor was called me last night and he was, he was struggling because they didn't have his pronoun on there. And he started crying and was asking me what, what he should do. I talked him through it though. I told him, don't be so stubborn. Just choose one of the 18. They've just choose one of the 18. They've given though. I told him, don't be so stubborn.

Just choose one of the 18 they've given you. Don't be a weirdo. Okay, so that's interesting. Colton's saying he didn't see his survey either. Do any of the guys I like have any – do any of the guys that I pull for in my bias, is there anyone that we know that the CrossFit community knows that's like, uh-oh, this guy didn't make it because of this issue? I mean, there was one well-known guy that Hiller talked about.

Like a James Newberry type. You know what I mean? Is there anyone like that? You should just pull up James Newberry's most recent posts on Instagram. You'll like that. Like a Becca Voigt? She's in. How about Sam Briggs?

She didn't make it, right? She didn't make it, but she had a very good score on that workout. So this change would not help her very much. Okay. But that's irrelevant. This is just serving your own purposes now. Can we see James Newberry's post? I want to see what Brian's talking about here.

Let's see, James. It's on Instagram. Yeah. By the way, I want to apologize to Con and to all of you who thought you were going to get Con Porter this morning. That was totally our fault, it looks like. Do you want me to spell Newberry for you, Bill?

I don't know how to spell it. I'm just joking. We had many athletes complete this workout correctly. Many also did not submit a video, as they likely did not expect to have a top score. Did you give them the... There we go. Oh, wow. Wow.

Let me see his whole account. Wow. Shit, he's... Oh, yeah. Wow. Shit. He's, Oh yeah. I totally approve. He's yeah. I like this turn. He's taking, what's going on. He's just taking it. Wow. Wait, let me see that girl. He's dead lifting with what is going on. Is that the same girl at the bar? I think so. Before we decided to run each other. Okay. Let's look, let's go straight to her account. Hi James. Bye James. My goodness.

Okay, let's go straight to her account. Hi, James. Bye, James. My goodness. 310,000 followers. She plays golf. Oh, he's partying. Keep scrolling. Let me see that one of her butt hitting a golf ball.

It's like from a distance oh that camera works horrible you're fired no one wants to see where the ball goes all right wow okay he's killing it so he's he he's he's he's turned into a supermodel yeah but he's still uh still alive in the season also let me see that picture of him with the glasses on. He's like turned into one of the Beatles. I wonder if he's going to start doing something creative. Isn't he one of Khan Porter's homies? Yeah, they were traveling around the world for a while together. And now they've just, you know, Khan's over there in Iceland doing his thing.

And there's James. Yeah, wow. He looks like he is having fun, right? Yeah. Look at his mouth. Isn't it fascinating that a human's mouth also kind of looks like a vagina? See, I was like at the tongue there. It's like that look of like a small hamburger.

Patrick Vellner, James is a walking thirst trap, and I'm here for it. I know. It's crazy. I didn't know that. I did not know that. Actually, I'll be curious to see how he does at the semifinals. The men's field in Australia is very competitive, and he's 24th ranked after quarterfinals, but I think he'll probably still end up in the top 10 at worst, maybe even top five if he has a good weekend.

Brian, is this the first time we've seen shuttle run at home or we've seen shuttle run before? First time. I mean, we had heard that it might be a part of the open this year um and uh honestly it would have been better in the open from than quarterfinals at this point from because there's less on the line um historically have we ever seen this much chaos i don't know about one workout um i mean you know well like just last week we were talking about how it's impossible to determine what a good rep of a pistol is and uh and now we're having another same problem but it's in the same competition so it's like these are two really bad ones in the same competition here. There have been more isolated incidences.

You know, like there was one year that a guy got, you know, people were complaining about the wall balls and whatever, but no, I think this is pretty bad. These are, this is pretty much up there at the top. This is the most category,

not only in terms of incident, but in succession of incidents. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's weird. I mean, it's not weird. We see what's going on.

They, they got, they got a new CEO. They've had in the last two years, they've got, they've had two CEOs in the last two years. They don't have a CEO. Now the games team is completely been reshuffled. And the main guy has been fired. They obviously have a lot of drama going on because after the ceo fired the games guy then he was gone they've had four or five affiliate directors over there since greg sold the company um there is no there still is no media team um

it it makes sense but i guess i don't want to believe it i want it to be i want to i want to think that things are getting better but but they don't seem to believe it. I want it to be, I want to, I want to think that things are getting better, but, but they don't seem to be, there's no sign anywhere of it getting better, right? No, there are signs of, there are some good things that are happening. Okay.

Tell me, tell me. And what do you know about the, how did that, you know, that, that, that people were saying,

sorry, I didn't let you finish, but when Annika Greer made that, when the Annika Greer thing happened, and as much as i think that i want her to be let in i think i'm wrong in saying that i think the vast majority of people know that like hey these were the rules and she didn't follow them but i still want her to get in but i hear you guys and you guys are probably right i'm okay with being on the wrong

side but there is a league there's a there's an athlete league or like group right and it has i think it has annie and and um brent fikowski on it and they're supposed to stand up for the athletes, but that doesn't mean they supposed to stand up for the athletes when the athletes are wrong. Right? So some people were like, Hey, that, that, the, that athlete council should stand up for Anika Greer, but should they stand up for her if she's wrong? Like, how does that work? Where do you fall on that? What's your understanding of what's going on there?

And, and did they get involved at all? Yeah. I mean, I actually, I reached out to a lot of people on Friday night when I found out the leaderboard was finalized, because honestly, I didn't want to have to write this article. You know, I would have much preferred that this could have been handled. And that's why we reached out to Adrian in the first place is that we were hoping to let him know like, Hey, there's a lot of scores in here that look unusual. And we're hoping that you guys are looking at him he said they were but then when the leaderboard was finalized uh i was like there's no evidence here why did you reach out to adrian is it his is it in his i don't know i mean i see he's the he's the direct

what is the competition director of the games this is part of the game season i figured even if he's not working on it directly he could have an influence on whomever is responsible for that. And there is precedent for them to extend the deadline for the leaderboard to be finalized. They did that after the open. They could have done it after quarterfinals and they could say, hey, we didn't expect this many inaccuracies in workout number three. We need a couple of days more to look at this and get the leaderboard right. We want to make sure that we get everyone that we can accounted for and have the right people sent to the next round of the season. And that's kind of what I was hoping would happen. And I, you know, it didn't happen. And so when I was like, man, I don't really see

any way around eventually addressing this topic, but I didn't want to rush into it. So I reached out to a variety of different people, including Brent Fugowski. And I talked to him about this and I wanted to get his perspective as someone who is part of the PFAA and understand what their role is relative to the, you know, the CrossFit games team. And, um, you know, he thinks, he thinks in the athletes in general think, yeah, this is something that should be, uh, you know, should it, shouldn't be happening. And so I don't know what the process is on their end.

He, he, he thinks that anika should should have gotten in also no no no we're talking about this workout three okay um i don't know what he thinks about the anika greer situation um but i because i didn't ask him about that too much i just asked him about this really you know and he said yeah this is a lot of a lot of things that doesn't look really good and probably creates a unfair competition for some athletes who put a lot of hard work and effort for years to have a chance to make it to a semifinal that might be missing out because of what I can't. You know, it's hard for me to describe it as anything other than laziness and CrossFit sense when it comes to this workout and evaluating it. Or maybe they are working on it.

If they were working on it, then why wouldn't they just tell us that instead of saying that the leaderboard is finalized? So that we have stuff to talk about they care about are you my youtube channel um speaking of youtube channels before i forget i want to take a quick peek can we see velner's youtube channel how long has it been up um a couple days oh man this is going to break my heart he's going to have like four times the amount of subscribers as me already this is gonna really hurt it's gonna hurt i didn't even know they had internet in canada do do you have to be vaccinated to watch um uh velner's youtube channel he's up in canada i don't know if i've qualified let's see how many oh no only half as many so far whatever you do will do not subscribe keep that arrow oh i knew it fucking no one can be trusted these days

patrick velner he doesn't even have a drop shadow on his name doesn't have a drop shadow let's see let's see a quarterfinals how did how did the big big dogs do like velner in this meaning in terms of like he didn't screw up he doesn't screw up right the cows he doesn't throw up justin madaris does not screw this up right Right. His video is perfect. Can we see Justin Medeiros his video? I don't know. I don't know about that. How low key is Justin Medeiros in all of this and everything so far? He's just doing his thing. And, uh,

I spoke to Adam, uh, uh, Neifer recently and he's just doing his thing. And, uh, I spoke to Adam, uh, uh, Neifer recently and he's over there. Oh, he's got twice as many subscribers as you. Yeah. Great. Dude. Sooner or later,

he's going to get, and look at, so here's the thing. He not look at how his views relative to his subscribers. It's so good. Oh, it's so good. i can't compare myself to adjust them there's can you click on um on his is his submission for the workout in this

and on his youtube channel uh i don't know i mean look at this length of the videos obviously not the full length of any of his workouts is in there but i'm sure there are clips of them and i think that also the buttery bros were with him for at least one of the workouts maybe maybe so he has a different channel he must have a different channel that's a great question for him do the athletes in general have different channels where they submit their videos you can you can so you can have them as unlisted so you can see we can't see them here and then if they want to share them with someone, they can. Okay. And I mean, it's actually an interesting point of conversation.

Some athletes are very quick to put their videos out there and have them available for everyone to see. And obviously then they get highly scrutinized, but they also get a lot of eyes on them. And other athletes don't post their videos and therefore they don't get the scrutiny, but they also don't get the likes or subscribes or whatever they want oh i like this patrick has responded this is actually a pretty nice response the pfa is working to solve problems upstream and educate the athletes to try to avoid the issues happening in the future i didn't wow that's that's personal responsibility and accountability that's that's next level shit that's like no that's that's exactly right and that you know that's kind of what i said is like it's really easy to see crossfit's fault here these scores are inaccurate oh that's not how i read that's not how i'm reading what he said no no but it's less most people aren't saying why are so many athletes scoring

this up and so velner's saying yeah that's a problem as well and there needs to be a better plan in the future to make sure that athletes and judges don't make those mistakes. Yeah. Yeah. Part of that's on CrossFit to decide what are we going to include? Is it clearly communicated? What's the likelihood that this is going to create a big problem like this? And that's why.

What if they just, what if they just did this? You fucked up the workout and they just got rid of all those people. They do have the option to invalidate scores. And what they choose to invalidate scores for is- I would love to see the leaderboard like that. Just go through and every single person who did the 25-foot shuttle run or didn't step over the line or all of those things that Andrew Hiller points out in his video, just wax them. They could do that, but they've already outlined in the leaderboard a process by which they invalidate scores compared to assess major penalties. And like we talked about, I don't know, a week or more ago while we saw them making adjustments to the leaderboard for this workout.

That's what's so strange about this. They knew that there were inaccurate scores there. We talked about it last time. Adler was in 34th. Now he's all the way up to first. What happened to those 33 guys and how come they didn't look, continue looking beyond that and assess similar penalties to the rest of the inaccurate scores on the leaderboard. It would be possible to go through every one to seven,

that 15,000 is not, I mean, someone can do it. Yeah. Just do a quick scan of each one. What is the PFA is awesome. Okay. Don't get fucking carried away,

but the people submitting shit videos and valid scores are probably not members. Quiet, quiet. You've overstepped. That's an interesting thought also. Is there a way that we could... I think Andrew talked about this because I had talked to him about it beforehand. Is there a way that we could

have two different categories in the season? Everyone can participate in the Open, or you can choose to compete as a professional in the sport. And if you choose to compete as a professional, it costs more money, but you're getting more in return. There's a lot of things to be talked about. I don't like it.

I don't like it. That's because you haven't thought it through yet. There are a lot of things that are potentially problematic. I don't like the implications. I just don't like the implications, the social implications. Practically, maybe it's great. I don't like the implications. I just don't like the implications, the social implications. Practically. Maybe it's great. I don't like the social implications.

I like it that it's, well, I already don't like some of the things they've done earlier. You mentioned earlier that maybe it's a resource problem. And if it's a resource problem, then how are you going to get more resources? And if the athletes who want this to be not a problem anymore are spending years of their time training and preparing

for this then why not just have a flat fee for registration at the start of the season i'm committing to compete as a pro i know that this is what i'm getting in return for that and i don't have to keep paying a quarterfinal semi-final games fee i've just paid to be a pro this year i then i am no longer entering the same competition as justin madaris your name can still be on the leaderboard with them There's just a different process for going through that. You're still doing the same workouts. It's already too divided. I like the whole

thing where we all jump in the water together and only 10 of us get out. The rest of us drown. That's great. I like that. I don't even like all the scaled shit either. Just have there be five or six or seven workouts and just get a little bit harder each one and knock people off all the scaled shit either. Just have there be five or six or seven workouts, and just get a little bit harder each one and knock people off as the weeks go on.

I don't like any of that stuff. I like us all. We all jump in the water. It's silly now that some people get to wear the life jacket. Yeah, well, what if the rules say you can't wear life jackets, but eight of the ten people that get out of the water have life jackets on, and then you're like, what the hell? Those guys have life jackets.

I don't like that. Yeah. Well, that's what's happening. No, you can't steal my metaphor. That's not what's up. Oh, well, yeah, yeah. Just hijacked your metaphor. You did.

What is it? If Justin and Tia win this year, it's a bad look for CrossFit. I think it's a great look for CrossFit. I'd like to see Tia eat someone. Win and eat someone. I'd like to see to eat someone win and eat someone i'd like to see in in justin madero say i'm not doing the last workout and have enough points to win i tap wait why is it about what do you know did you think it's a bad look at all if they win i'd be curious to know why he thinks that yeah me too

did you ever think for a second that crossfit was protecting certain athletes when i worked there we would hear that sometimes that would be like you know that's like some sort of like reddit shit did you ever think that do you think that if i mean yeah would have fucked up her entry that you mean by protecting well let me do you think if tia would have fucked up her score turned it in later i mean it's a great question if what happened to anika happened to tio what would be the case if the leaderboard malfunction was keeping tia out what would be the case yeah we gotta let her in you gotta let her in i think that's obviously not the right answer, but what would you do? Damn, I'm almost 100% healthy again.

What would I do? What would you do? Would you let Tia in? If what? Exact same thing. Change Anika Greer's name to Tia Claire Toomey Shane Orr. Would you let her in? I think I like, you in? I think I like,

you know, I think, I think I like Andrew's idea for this. You know, he, he outlined an idea that's again, not perfect, but it is a solution that allows for that horrible video. He made even Hiller's not perfect.

That was a stupid video. The first nine minutes were great. Cause he just stole my idea. Then after that, it just takes a fucking dive that, that, that had to go to the um um last chance qualifier right yes component yeah all right um before we leave what do you think's gonna happen

here how can there be a competition where there's people who are getting in who don't deserve it and people who aren't getting in who deserve it and it's so obvious like this is so obvious so so how does this end how does this resolve do you think we're going to hear something in the next couple days i don't know i'm not sure uh a lot of people seem to think that that has to happen but crossfit has no obligation to do that they can you know and um they've been silent on it so far. I mean, honestly, if I was guessing,

I would think that nothing's going to happen and it's just going to continue like this for this year. And, you know, people are going to have to be in a situation like they were in three years ago

where they say, man, this isn't, I'm not sure if this is something I want to participate in next year or not. Can you tell me what you think is going to happen? I think CrossFit's going to fix it.

I don't think they are i don't think they cannot you almost have to give everyone their money but when you sign up for the open doesn't it do you sign a contract and there's some obligation on their part to do their best to make a fair... I'm telling you, pull up the rulebook and search for sole discretion and see how many times it pops up. Okay. Basically, every rule is written in there. CrossFit can do whatever they want up to their sole discretion. So that's the game that everyone's deciding to play.

I get that, but if you give them money for a competition, there's – When you decide to do that, there are clauses written into that thing that says nonrefundable. So you've decided whatever happens, happens, and here's my 50 bucks for quarterfinals. You have to let Annika in. If she changes the score that Tia might get, she changes the entire competition. Fittest on Earth have to be tested against the others. I know, but Tyler, the argument is that the fittest on earth, part of that is being able, is like having an IQ that's high enough to follow the rules. Sorry, that's not nice.

I'm not digging it. No, it's not that. It's that you have to have an IQ high enough to follow the rules that CrossFit chooses to uphold the standard for. Right. Because what you just said is how could so many athletes make this mistake? And a bunch of athletes who made that mistake did have their scores penalized. We saw it happen. We saw it happen live on the podcast.

Scores are being taken down. We searched for one of those scores. We saw the penalty that was assessed. And now we see other athletes who we're not even suspicious of their scores being bad anymore. We actually know that their scores are bad because someone went and found the videos on YouTube and put them all together and we can watch them not doing the actual reps, but they never received a penalty for their workout. Right. It's not even, we're not guessing. We know. Thank you, you will crossfit reserves the exclusive right to invite past winners guest athletes teams or others to participate in any stage of the competition

this decision may be made to preserve the tradition and spirit of the crossfit games or for any other reason at the sole discretion of crossfit that's uh athletes 1.02. That's from the rulebook, Will? Yes, it is. I love it. There are seven other instances of where they use this phrase in the rulebook. It's one of their favorites. I had another thing I was saying about Brian is they still haven't updated that penalties document. So we know they've taken out 33 people at least on workout three that were in

front of or adjusted their scores. And those are still not showing up. And it hasn't been updated since the first day they published it. That's right. And I thought that it might be because those were penalties, not score adjustments, but the document itself is actually called scoring adjustments. And we know that those 33 scores were adjusted. And we also know that they're not included in that document. There's actually only three scoring adjustments slash penalties listed on that document still. And only one of them is for not doing the correct number of shuttle runs. And it's listed as four shuttle runs short.

I'm sorry. Where is that document? Is that on the game site? Yeah. Just search across it. Scoring adjustments 2022 or something. You're saying that they have a log that they claim is where all the changes are made, and it's super-duper incomplete. Well, it's very inclusive of workout number two penalties.

Please don't use that word. It triggers me. It includes a lot of penalties for workout two, but it includes only three penalties or scoring adjustments listed for workout number three these are all workout two workout two workout two here's workout three and four you can see them all on one page there's nothing okay well here's the thing it's because they're still doing workout three no they're not because workout three is such a mess nah nah nah they have this old discretion you you've missed must have missed that part. I know that they're not. Oh, man.

You sound like someone I know. His name is Sevan. Look at this. Look at this. This was recently tweeted by CrossFit Games. The 2022 individual quarterfinals leaderboard is now officially including invalid scores. All right. So they've come clean.

That's really cool of them. That's not an official tweet people i think that in the case of annika greer she should have they should have argued solely based off that 1.02 in the rulebook like hey i know i didn't submit my score on time but you have this clause in the rulebook that you can invite people clearly i'm one of the fittest people this year given open quarterfinals performances like i think i should be invited i think that's a better argument than anything else it's like you're doing the fittest on earth competition i messed up but you have this clause that you can do whatever you want so that's my opinion just yeah i i like it too i mean it allows them

just to do anything uh efren uh moya uh seven on the sport has gotten too big the pro level entry no no you just can't use that as an argument it just can't i mean i hear you i know you want to do that i know you want to here's the thing the crossFit games are still just the skin. They're not the heart. They're not the liver. They're not the kidney. They're not the bones. They're not the tendons.

They're not the ligaments. It's just the most superficial part of what CrossFit Inc. is. Don't be mesmerized by it. And don't be mesmerized by the athletes and all their followers and everything they say. They aren't shit. They're the skin. It's fun to look at. I love skin.

Love skin. I love looking at the outside. I'm as superficial as you fucking get. But don't ever ignore what's on the inside. It is not too big. We can keep the whole thing together, chugging along. We're going to ruin the cult aspect of it. We're going to ruin the religious aspect of it.

The tribal aspect of it. We're going to ruin the religious aspect of it, the tribal aspect of it. We're going to ruin it if we keep doing it, going down this path of thinking that it's too big or that there's athletes and non-athletes. We're going to ruin it. It's going to lose its spirit. It's going to lose its soul. I'm telling you.

Maybe it has already. Maybe it has already. Maybe if I shaved my gray beard, I'd change my mind. But I appreciate your comment too, Efren. Or if it got past eight inches long. My beard? Yeah, it's like, you know. I feel like right now is the most mature stage of the beard.

When it gets super long, different personality. Cut it off, different personality. It's going to. I'm going for that Rory McKernan look that he had at, I think, Guadalupalooza where it's like square,'m going for that uh i'm going for that rory mccernan look that he had it uh i think wadapalooza where it's like square like he looks like he's from egypt i had i i had rory mccernan on the crossfit podcast one time and we were doing something with our phones and his phone number leaked out onto the air and he pulled me aside and he's like hey dude that was a fucked up thing to do leaking out my phone number in there and i'm like i didn't

do it on purpose and he goes well you may have not done it on purpose but that would have never happened if it was greg or dave's phone number and like he checkmated my ass you know what i'm saying and that's that's what's happened i i i i feel like that's where the crossfit games are too. How am I going to explain that story, connect those stories? Maybe I'm not. Maybe I'm not going to connect. I think what you're saying is integrity is having that for the same kind of care for the top person that you have for the 500th person right okay i'll buy that

thank you for saving my story that's what i heard when you're talking you're saying good like if it was greg or dave you wouldn't have leaked it but that's what you're saying i think it's right like if you have integrity and you care like about then if tia didn't submit her score my opinion obviously you would let her go to semifinals. Otherwise, you're just ruining the rest of the season for the women. Right. Hey, there is a little bit of a – that is interesting what Will's pointing out.

There is a little bit of a disconnect there, Brian. You see that? There's crazy integrity. There's supposedly crazy integrity around the Annika Greer decision, Annika Greer decision, but there isn't that integrity around the Annika Greer decision. But there isn't that integrity around workout number three. I feel like we already addressed that.

Alright. On one final note, I would like to show you guys an Instagram account. It's called The Fake... What is it called? The Fake Real Sub on Podcast. This thing just popped up

on my feed this morning this thing is ridiculous this account is so ridiculous i just like to share can you pull that up will yeah and share that it is so ridiculous when did you spot this account will and when they started tagging us oh is that recently how long has this account been up? Yesterday. Oh, man. Someone's busy. Someone is busy, busy, busy. I like all the posts except for the one about me. I know. Me too. I love all the posts except the one about me.

Pull up the one of, let's look at them all, and you guys can go through. Oh, my goodness. There's a new one. Oh, my goodness. I've never seen this one. Good thing there's always a backup available. Okay, look it. Everyone is so feminine in these. I mean, these are amazing. Your skin's definitely been airbrushed right there, Brian.

Look at you. Your skin is not that nice. What are you talking about? She sent the makeup team over this morning and you got the photo let me read one of these can you pull it pull up um john young's is really mean okay let's go with john let's go with john young's in okay so this is a post from from what's the name of the fake Savon podcast? John Young. Who even is this guy? Only invited on the show when there is literally no one else available and still probably not even then.

Wow. Like every other dude at your gym actually thinks he has a chance of going to the games in a year or two. Was originally selected by Brian's ai system as a potential new initiate but that project has since been scrapped oh mr young yikes look at the comments ouch all right i don't even want to read mine uh brian is there anything else we want to say about this no it's uh i mean we're in a holding pattern we don't know what's going to happen yeah it's a really it's a really to me it's a really unfortunate and sad situation um

and i really i really want to believe that they're doing everything they can to make you know these early stages of the competition meaningful valid relevant exciting and um in terms of you know you know this situation we've been talking about all morning, it feels like a big miss. There's a lot of people frustrated with it. There are a lot of athletes that I know of and I've heard from who are being proactive now or maybe reactive now and trying to contact them and say, hey, are you really not going to do anything about this? And I kind of feel bad because in the week prior to them finalizing that, a lot of people reached out to me and said,

hey, you see all these scores on workout three, something looks wrong here. And to every single one of those persons that responded, I said, I'm pretty sure they're doing something about this. Just be patient. And I was wrong. They stopped worrying about it at some point and decided to just move forward with the season

with inaccurate scores all over the place. I agree with everything Brian said, except for the fact that I'm going to hold off on that because I still think they're going to change the leaderboard. I don't think they're done. They can't leave it like that. I hope you're right about that. Will, do you have anything you want to add on there?

I was just going to say I think they're done because I think most people are volunteers. I think they say it's finalized and they're not going to bring back volunteers and they're not going to do it themselves. They've got to prep for semifinals. Will this taint the entire game season, you think? Well, that's a good question. I mean, people have very short-term memories these days. And so what's going to happen is that team quarterfinals for playoff plans will be sent out today.

People will start talking about the team quarterfinals all week. Let's do those workouts. The focus will shift. Semifinal invites will be sent out. Semifinal placements will be announced. People will start analyzing the different semifinals and making projections of what's going to happen there. And everyone will move forward from this but um you know that's if that's how it goes then hopefully it's not forgotten and that and you know we won't forget about it but hopefully

crossfit doesn't forget about it and that you know if i was they might already be saying like we have to have a better plan next year um will let's let's make a graphic of a train crashing and after the games this year and it'll have like 30 cars and each car will have each incident and we'll do an entire show with brian where we talk about this fucking colossal train wreck that is the 2022 crossfit game season do you know what i mean it's just cars piled on top of each other i hope some i i mean of course i want the games to be great but it would be great if something crazy happened there like a tornado went through the event i feel like the impact is like as far as actual competition impact of this is so minuscule but obviously everyone it gets going

to keep building if another mistake happens everyone's already on edge that's the biggest impact i think is everyone's scrutinizing every little thing so pressure is building uh tonight at 6 30 p.m pacific standard time brian and i will be back uh we hopefully will have a special guest i need to hunt one down um to talk about the uh power rankings brian do you want to tell us exactly what these rankings are um describe what they are and then we'll get off the air and get to work and see you guys tonight yeah this is uh you know prior to the season i put out a power rankings for the top 10 men and women around the world heading into the 2022 season and after quarterfinals updated the list and expanded it to the top 20.

And, um, more, we'll talk more about it tonight. So could you say that these are the best CrossFitters in the world currently? Which? The ones that we're going to talk about tonight. These are,

these are the best ones. Okay. Yeah. I mean, my, my order is only my, my order, but it's, uh, it's the only order that matters. These are the best ones okay yeah i mean my my order is only my my order but it's uh it's the only order that matters these are the you know the best athletes in the world and we've learned some things about some of them through the first two parts of the season

that are good and some things that are a little bit concerning and now we'll see where uh you know kind of where they're at right now obviously there's still a couple months till the semifinals and then the games but we have a better picture now than we did two months ago, a month ago. Andrew Hiller deals in the facts. This show tells you who's the best from Brian Friend. Will, thank you, Brian. Thank you. Guys, thanks.