The Sevan Podcast - #694 - Dubai Fitness Championship Day 2 Recap ft. Chase Ingraham & Brian Friend

Episode Date: December 4, 2022

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Look for new value programs when you shop at Loblaws, in-store and online. Conditions may apply. See in-store for details. Margaritas down at the beach. Bam, we're live. I'm watching this. Brian, hi. Chase, hi. Sousa, hi. This is what you're seeing on the screen right now. Here is the, I think this is the ride or die event. It was an elimination event. They started with, I think, 20 athletes, then 10, and then five. I think this is the final heat of five. I wanted to show Brian Chase and Suza this.

Look at Luka Djokic here. Watch what happens here at the beginning. So look at their feet where their feet are at the starting line i don't know if you guys can see that um they're they're over what looks like to be the starting line we've had this happen before in events where we don't know really what the lines exactly yeah is it on the line or behind the line brian you know what the but before we brian hold on one second we'll give you a bunch of stuff to answer give me one second and then we'll get this and i want you to watch luka jukic what happens here and i don't see any

judges it looks like there's a field marshal in the back with a uh in that white shirt with kind of the the the funny uh uh groucho marx mustache but let me um watch luka here he's in between. He's just, he's in lane number five. It's the 13th widest lane. All the lanes are a little bit wider and narrow than the others just to keep us on. I'd love, I can't wait to hear how they mark this field. And, okay, now look what happens there. We already have a guy on lane eight who started to go. I would have loved to have seen Matt Frazier come out there

and just like gut punch him, but whatever. And then, okay, and then look at that. Then the guy in lane six went, and I purposely turned off the sound, so we didn't get to hear that, so it's hard to do that. But watch Luka Jukic here. Watch what happens. Oh, no, this isn't the right heat. Anyway, in one of the heats he

takes off and he starts running and he looks and he stops running and the rest of the guys keep running and he looks like uh it was it was like maybe the prince told him hey put on the brakes buddy don't you're not supposed to do this brian hi uh absolutely fantastic event brian um i i had to watch all five hours of in 30 minutes commentating this fantastic you and derek are great it was cool to see matt up uh in the um in the booth with you guys and uh once you guys got past that first 30 minutes of the heavy lifts i must say that the uh we were really able to see the entire event and follow it so i i appreciate uh i appreciate the fact we're able to see all the athletes.

Some weird lighting or something. It's kind of cool. It's like you're stuck in the 70s. You're like a little jaundice. A little jaundice. Yeah, a little jaundice. By the way, Derek doesn't make you look too small either. Those words weren't on there when I got here.

I've just been kind of bored, so I painted that myself. Beautiful. You did a great job. That penmanship. That's the Brian Friend fontrian just to just to talk about what we just showed quickly what what are the rules there is this kind of like more like is this a serious i mean obviously it's a serious competition the winner gets three thousand dollars but is there sort of like a uh kind of a gladiator less hillar-esque and more uh you know gladiator, less Hiller-esque and more gladiator vibe to this. Like, hey, take what you can.

Like in arm wrestling, it's like, hey, you know the hand position, you got to fight for. Chase, how many times have you been out here to Dubai to do the commentary? I think three. Any patterns over your experience? From the outside looking in? Sounds like Brian's lost his virginity. from the outside looking in sounds like brian's lost his virginity on the inside looking in he's looking for a friend to be like yeah i see some things and i'm like yeah that sounds that looks about the same amount as much information as the

broadcasters get about what's going on when it comes to the action or the rules? Well, I can tell you guys, I think that HWPO's involvement in this competition was really beneficial for me personally, because I was able to work with them a couple of weeks leading up to the event, test out many of the workouts, have some feedback and input there. They're working in collaboration with the event organizers for DFC

to put this competition on. And of course, the event organizers for DFC to put this competition on. And of course, the event is funded by, you know, an individual or a family here. And so there's just some input coming from different areas. Something else that I'm not justifying this, it's just how it is, is that being on time and being prepared for things, as opposed to just kind of going with the flow is just different culturally here. And it certainly gets in trouble. Like the Sevan podcast. Like the Sevan podcast. 30 minutes before we go on, I send you guys DMs or texts.

Do you guys want to come on? Yeah. And I mean, I knew that. I've been here one time before. I had a chance to work with Bill and Chase in 2019. And things happen very last minute. So I made it my priority getting ready for this to prepare for the things I could prepare for, which was to know as much about the athletes and the workouts, given the fact that I knew there would be some late changes, which there were many late changes today.

But also knowing that I wouldn't have an opportunity to speak to the director until very close to the event. If I did get to talk to him, he may not speak English. Many of the cameramen don't speak English. There might be a liaison that's kind of working between those things. We may not have heat sheets. We may not have graphics. We may not have audio. And that's just sometimes how it is. control, but, uh, I kind of just came down to the point and I was happy to hear you say that I said to the guys, I want to see all the athletes lift. I want to see all the athletes finish. And if the people at home can hear our voices can be like, at least check those three boxes. And it, and it is, you guys are doing a great job. And if they stick to the wide, to the wide shots, we're golden. We can, we can follow it like a sport. We can follow it like a competition. We can see how close people are. Uh, when you say someone's name and give us the lane number we can just zoom right in it's uh it's fine it's it's it's it's better than fine there are some weird quirky things about it like those feet like over the starting line um the the fact that sometimes we see someone take

off and then like look back at their judge like they're not sure if they got an early start or not. There's no chip timers, right? This whole thing is old school, right? They count claps. 87 claps, lane seven. Yeah, just put a little piece of tape on the air runner and it'll do the job. Just put a little piece of tape on the air runner and it'll do the job. And is there any reason that the lanes are different widths?

Not any good reason. Okay. The lines are straight. The lines are extremely straight. I didn't go out there with the protractor, but it looks like a lot of right angles to me. I'm no scientist. I'm no mathematician, but I see a lot of right angles. Yeah, the lines no scientist i'm like i'm no mathematician but i see a lot of right angles yeah the lines are straight the lanes are not even that's those are true facts and and have you asked or is it like is it like the don't ask don't tell policy of the 80s pick your battles type of situation okay um the the workouts let's talk about just the bread and butter. Uh, the workouts look like they

are all going off on time with the right athletes with a very fierce competition. Oh, did I already say something that's not true? Did we get some people on the wrong eats? Um, and, and the competition looks fierce and it looks fair. And, uh, you know, we don't have any weird judges on lane five, you know, always everyone's getting the penalties. It looks like they're allowed to perform. It looks like the weights were picked accurately. Even though you were mentioning you guys were surprised at how many people did so well at the hand clean, I thought it was fine. I thought it was a great way for these guys to showcase their strengths.

Is everything else running without a hitch, except for just sort of these quirky things that come with this event? I'd say for the most part, and I don't know exactly what the intent was by HWPO and DFC in terms of the number of barbells that they wanted to see athletes lift in the strength ladder there. Just taking it on its own, I don't mind that they're going, you know, 13, 14, 15 bars deep there, you know, they are getting four minutes before they lift again. And a little bit of fatigue builds up there. It's very contrary to last year where they only had two attempts at a max lift. So instead of that, you have to earn it over 15 bars. So I think it is a

different way to test strength and a good way to test strength, but I know that they weren't expecting the, especially the women to get that heavy and therefore the event to test strength but i know that they weren't expecting uh the especially the women to get that heavy and therefore the event to go that long and i believe that after that event we were about 90 minutes behind schedule of what we expected oh you were okay well when i went back and watched it it seemed great to me yeah i don't know the product like the product i think was really good and fun and enjoyable to watch. But compared to what the expectation was, and just in general about the field of athletes here, you know, there's been a lot of talk. This isn't the strongest field that Dubai has ever seen. I was blown away by the athletes today. I thought that they were incredible. And I was extremely impressed in all three workouts with the caliber and the level of output that we were able to see. How much time do we have with you right now? We'll see.

Okay. I just want to quickly go over day one. I watched all of Lauren Khalil's videos from the morning chalk up. Chase and Brian, feel free to, and Sousa, you too, feel free to jump in wherever you want as I go through my notes here from the interviews Lauren did. You can watch the full interviews over at the Morning Chalk Up YouTube page with Lauren Khalil. Reggie Foss has said he bear crawled two flights of stairs. Okay. Reggie Faza said he bear crawled two flights of stairs. Now, we as the viewers at home did get to see Lazar Jukic do a bear crawl on his final flight. And we also saw how damaged he was.

And I'd like to know anything you know about what actually happened to Lazar. It looked like some neurological meltdown, the way his legs were, like, flapping all over the place. But did anyone else bear crawl? over the place but did anyone else bear crawl i mean that that sounds like i've never seen an event at the crossfit games where someone went on all four when they were when they could have ran run 2009 oh good point good point chase 2020 good point those were some incredible angles people got we got in trouble for some of those shots that's right that's right uh brian brian did you hear anyone else besides fossa and did any of the women go on all four that you know of uh i don't think i hadn't heard otherwise

um but i haven't really asked that question you know it's actually a technique that a lot of stair racers use is bare serious yeah oh oh shit, I've done a couple stair races over the last decade just for fun, and I got beat by professionals, and they use a bear crawl technique. Maybe not the whole time, but it's just like switching up positions on a rower when you're going a long distance. They'll switch up pulling on the rails and bear crawling. They'll have gloves out there for it specifically. Wow.

And is that something that you put into your pacing? So you you would do 10 flights of stairs on on two and then one bear crawl it just kind of depends on preference it's the same thing for like a hill run is it best to lean forward and have short choppy steps and lean into the hill or get on all fours i mean oh think how many people we saw bear crawling in the 2016 trail run at uh in aromas when they flew everybody down there that was kind of mandatory though yeah it was almost like it it uh it it makes it decide for you sometimes right uh i just going back i know you guys didn't see the podcast earlier today but uh jethro cardona just like seven today guys just want to hug girls um i just want to touch chase's beard i understand we are people

who see things and then want other senses to experience it and it's not about shaving before you're not the only one who wants to touch chase's beard um i've actually i've already decided that if you go off on one of your tangents that i'm going to just stare at chase's beard instead oh awesome awesome it's the eye candy eye candy. That one's appropriate. So, Brian, what did happen? Did medics, we were told and we saw kind of a glimmer that Lazar was on a stretcher on the 160th floor. Can you give us, tell us anything that happened? Was there any conclusive medical evaluation that they're like, hey, he was low on electrolytes or he's dehydrated or what happened there?

Panic attack, which we will get to. Well, yeah, I mean, we got him water. We got him sugar, apple juice, a little bit of food that we had there. And the medics were tending to him, you know, the entire time. Everyone else finished the event and was able to go back on the buses. He stayed with the medics, a couple of the event directors, saw a doctor, got medically cleared. All of his levels were normal and they approved him to come back to the hotel and see his girlfriend and his family.

But he definitely wasn't feeling well. And I don't really think he was feeling maybe up to standards until midday today. So the schedule ended up being favorable for him in the fact that there were approximately 30 hours from the finish of that event until the start of the next workout this evening. If there'd been less time, I feel like he probably would have withdrawn. But given the amount of time that there was there, I think maybe around noon or 1 p.m. today in Dubai is when he kind of made the decision that he was feeling good enough to go for it and wanted to continue on in the competition. But he did not go to the hospital and he did not take an IV bag,

as far as you know? As far as I know. Okay. Jessica Valenzuela is commenting on the camera work. It only gets better. As I recall, that was just the first 30 minutes and then they go to a wide shot. So Mike M, so sugar, and then they go to a wide shot. So Mike M., so sugar saved his life. That's a fucking leap. I love you, Mike. I love you. Okay.

Alex Katoulis won event one even though he thought he was going slow. He said his legs were burning and it was mentally tough. He thought about his son's back in Athens with every step. Now, this is something that Chase brought up earlier. The breathing, the hardest part for him was the metabolic part. And he said turning in the staircase. Sorry, it was Bill Grundler who said this. He said turning in the staircase was very dizzying. I'm paraphrasing what he's saying, but he said that was one of the most challenging parts for him. He said metabolically, the burning the legs. And he said it was dizzying making all of those turns. I'm surprised we haven't heard that from more people. Brian. Actually, now that I think about it, me too.

And that's a lot of turns to make. And you're pretty much always going in the same direction, left, left, left, left. He said when they asked, did you pass anyone? He said he did. He said he passed Koski on the stairs and told him him sorry, buddy, as he passed him. The event was a half-mile climb straight up the tallest building in the world. Starts were staggered every two minutes. No water, no music. Railing played a large role. As we said, Lazar Djokic was ruined.

Four minutes separated the top 10 men uh um brian uh are you surprised that the women and men were so close in this not necessarily we've seen kind of a pattern emerge over the last maybe decade or so at the games where they're in these longer events uh that are relatively similar or sometimes exactly the same that there are women that are competitive with the men, long runs, runs and swims, sometimes maybe with a bike or a paddle or something like that. So it's definitely possible and not unprecedented for the women to keep up with the men on some of the endurance events. I want to say, I don't have the exact numbers in front of me, but I think Tyler Watkins or someone sent a spreadsheet, maybe it was Mr. Spin, Someone sent a spreadsheet.

Maybe it was Mr. Spin. But you can see that many, many, many women beat many men. And that's a pretty cool thing. It would be fun to see something like that with a mass start. Khan's supporter said he had some minor claustrophobia in the stairwell. He said he loosened his vest and pushed that out of his mind and got his breathing straight again. Koski said he came out. Let's stay with that comment from Khan for a second, because I think that this is one of the elements of the workout that is very cool. And this is kind of the thing that I like to see

athletes of this level have to deal with. I was there when Khan finished and a couple of minutes after he was able to gather himself, he said about two-thirds or three-quarters of the way in, he loosened his vest a little bit and was able to breathe much better. And he really wished that he'd thought to do that earlier on. But what I meant in the opening is it's an unknown element. You know, no one's practiced climbing 160 stairs without water, without air, without music, without anyone around them. And so the athletes are forced to adapt on the fly in a situation like that. He figured it out eventually what might help him out. Um, and other people didn't, you know, I just spoke with Luca Jukic

about this workout a few times and he goes, I should have skipped some stairs. He took every single stair the entire time. And he says, he thinks that cost him several minutes. He says he thinks that cost him several minutes. Oh, Lucas said that. Yeah. Interesting. I will say this. No matter what anyone says was their all-time favorite event they've ever done in their CrossFit life,

out of any athlete, there will be no athlete who climbed the world's tallest building who will ever forget it. It will be hard to say. I think actually Lazar Dukic forgot about that. Well, I heard, I'm hearing rumors that he forgot the last 60 floors. Yeah, I was going to say the best hundred of his life. Yeah, yeah. But, but what, what an amazing, amazing opportunity to kind of just say you did. There's a, it's, it's kind of like saying at this point that you got to compete in aromas you know it's it's up there with like a really fun thing to do i mean you went and climbed

the tallest building in the world and obviously we know a lot of people there's not even we can't even find an official world record on who's done this the fastest i will say this and we'll check with brian on this these guys and gals with their vests became very close to breaking what is the speculative world record. And what I mean close, I mean, less than a minute. Is that correct, Brian? Well, I'm pretty sure that, that Jamie Simmons has a record for women. I don't think that that's something that any women had ever done before. As far as men, I do think there was a guy who did a faster time than Alex Katoulas, but I don't think he was wearing a weight vest.

So Jamie Simmons has done that without a vest before? No. I'm saying, I don't think prior to that event, I don't think any women had ever done that. Oh, wow. One by default. Wow. That's like when my mom won the half marathon but she was the only one in her age group.

Wow. Okay. That's the only vagina that's traversed 160 floors in the Khalif Burj. In the world. What? In the world. Yeah. Ever.

Yeah, I think Lena Richter, Lena, I believe started second, but finished first, got to the top first. And in one of her posts, she mentioned that she was, or she thought she at least was the first woman to have ever done that. That's cool.

Wow. I wonder if you could have carried something up with you like a Mickey Mantle baseball card and be like, and it's been up to the tallest building in the world on the staircase. A flat Stanley. Yeah. This bottle cap from this Pepsi is the only bottle cap that's ever. Koski said he came out too fast and got frustrated with himself. Guillaume Brion said he used a lot of arm pulling. Brian, did you hear a lot about that at the top? Like, wow, people were surprised at how much arm, the fatigue on the arms.

Yeah. Fraser had been talking about it. He'd done it a day or two previously that that was a significant factor, and he was feeling the grip fatigue in the later flights of stairs. And Guillaume Briand did speak to him, and he said the same. He said he depended on that pulling strength a lot. The upper body pulling happens to be a strength of his anyway, so he was kind of pleasantly surprised that that factored into it. I wonder if they – you would think that the – do we know if the preferred route was on the inside so to stay to the the railing that's always on your right versus the because i'm because it's it's always a right hand turn right yeah but the it wasn't very wide right yeah it was basically you were pulling on both of the railings guiding yourself up wow okay and i you know i did a couple

of like maybe two or three of the flights of stairs at one point. And that pulling plus skipping a stairs technique seems pretty comfortable, but it's only for three flights. 160 is a very different story. Okay. You did one 50th. You did one 60th of the 150th to 160th. But the point is the stairwell is fairly narrow. And regardless of the height of the athlete, male or female, everyone could reach the railings on both sides and use it to help them move up the staircase. Hence the claustrophobic piece. Yeah. Because it is so narrow.

Amy Kringle said she started with the two-step technique, skipping a step, and she felt like she also started very hot. Emily Rolf said floors uh from 120 to 140 were the hardest and i'm guessing that's when you're you're kind of in no man's land right yeah i mean uh when i spoke to akif about it and he said it was about the 121 30 mark that it got it just got like really really tough and it was hard for him all the way in but maybe for her she realized you know there's this thing called the stop sign phenomenon running where like eventually around the corner you see the finish line and then you get a little like extra burst so maybe that happened to for her with about 20 flights left uh susan could you bring up

the leader board i think i sent it to you in the private chat. It is. Either one. I just want to give the top three for each of event one, and then we'll move over to event two. If you could rank them by event one. I've got to say,

this might be my favorite Dubai event ever. It's pretty cool. I had a chance to sit down with Saud, one of the organizers here, prior to this and do a little article recapping some of the more historic off-site events that they'd had here. They've had 32-kilometer bike rides in some desert environment. They've pushed weights underwater. They've swam with life vests in the ocean. They've done a variety of things, swam with life's best in the ocean. They've done a variety of things, but this is such a unique opportunity.

I mean, you can't, you just can't get up there. Like you can't do that. Right. And so to be able to do it in a competition like this is like seven, set a once in a lifetime opportunity. Susie,

can you organize them by the event? Number one, Burj Khalif. Yeah. Okay. Uh, Jamie Simmons, first place amy kringle emily rolf uh jamie's time was 32 10 if we could switch over to the men and also organize them by

event number one uh you have alex katoulis at 30 37 he's the one who said he thought he was going slow uh what's that guy's name anol akai anyol anyol pretty good pretty good anyol akai with the 3136 he by the way has a very fond memory of something else you've called him in the past oh he does what was it yes and a couple of his friends have adopted that nickname for him thanks to you oh i'm i'm sorry i'm sorry, Ikai. I'm sorry. Ikai, there was a kid in school. I did that too, and I regret doing it.

He was one of the nicest kids ever. And he had to pull me aside one day and be like, hey, you got to stop. And so I should have known better. I'm maturing slowly, as the listeners know. Okay. Briand Guillaume. Guillaume? Guillaume?

Guillaume Briand. Briant. The outlier from France. Kind of a miracle. It shows how inclusive CrossFit is, and even a French man can make it. I feel like that's a slight at Willie George. It is. It's a slight at all of the entire country.

And I love you guys. Don't worry. And France. 3209. Incredible time. of you guys don't worry um and france uh 3209 incredible time but what's even more incredible is it is the same time only by one second different than miss jamie simmons the fastest woman ever to climb the tallest building in the world event number two the hang clean ladder uh first time we've seen hang clean in any major uh crossfit event uh chase did you get a chance to watch this i did yeah what what were your thoughts about it is is a hang clean a viable lift to test

strength i like it yeah i mean we had the hang snatch at regionals i think in 2014 as a specific event but this was i mean it's different we've never really we've never seen the hang clean specifically and it poses a much different challenge than something from the floor or a power clean from the floor. So I really liked having this as the strength event, but I also liked the number of reps. I mean, you guys talked about the top of the show. I liked how many lifts that they had to do because it wasn't just, okay, we get to this weight.

It's really heavy. We get there in five. Like there was a big element, I think of stamina and endurance as well as having that top end strength so i i enjoyed that i liked watching them also go four or five at a time whatever they did and then and then seeing like holes in the lanes as they went on like oh shits and then there were three and then there was two and then there was one uh brian what did you think about the time uh one one opportunity and only 20 seconds we good with that the so what i really liked about it was the fact that you had to complete the lift within 20 seconds and the reason being because if you have the 20 seconds on 10 seconds

transition and you don't have that guideline in there then you risk to run the risk of people running deep into that 10 second transition period and throwing off the entire flow of the event. And so because I kind of like that, I'm also okay with the one attempt rule because then you don't necessarily feel rushed to try an attempt just in case so that I can maybe squeeze another one in. And so you saw really deliberate approaches from the athletes from the beginning all the way through. And I don't think there were very many athletes that had an executioner because they were feeling the pressure of knowing they had to do it the first time. I rushed through the event. I didn't see

a single execution like anything. Well, we'll get to this. There was, there was one major error in one of the tie breaks. We'll talk to that in a second. Uh, uh, were you okay with the time piece chase? 20 seconds. Yeah. yeah one lift one attempt get rid of all the bs i mean you think of matt's background in olympic lifting they get one shot like they don't have a minute to lift on the platform in fact they have i think what is it like a 30 or 40 second shot clock as soon as they step onto it and then they have to make the lift so there's a little bit of uh you see see Fraser's background in Olympic lifting in there. It's like, if you get one shot and one shot only, and I like that. I did see Jamie

Simmons catch one in the hole and try to come out of the hole three or four times and then eventually do it. And that was crazy. Do you remember that lift Ryan? That was nuts. I do. And I, you know, it's, it was one of the elements that you see there in the, in the hand clean seat and just a clean in general, a full squat clean, but you have to make the decision. Are you going to try to get a little bit of the bounce out of there? Or are you going to stabilize and wait and then trust your front squat ability from a dead stop and stand it up? And she was kind of riding the line in between there. She tried to bounce it out.

She didn't make it. Somehow she was able to gather herself, tried again, still didn't make it and tried a third time and stood it and stood it up and yeah it was one of the more impressive within that competition yeah like that and she didn't hit the next one and i don't think people know right because she did like three max lift squats before she got that rep but like i don't think people really understand how hard it is to do that like it's not like a snatch like for a snatch you you receive at the bottom the easiest part of the entire lift is standing it up for a hang clean. The hardest part clearly is standing it up and to bounce multiple times. Fabian Benito did the same thing. I was like, there's no way he's standing up with that. And then they get it on the second or third

try. I don't think people really truly can comprehend how difficult it is to do that. really truly can comprehend how difficult it is to do that and and uh what jamie did was a lot of mental power too because she got so vertical on her last attempt she wasn't just using muscle i mean she pushed that bar so far back into it into her into her neck and her throat i thought she was actually going to fall backwards for a second but i mean when she finally made it she was vertical it was it was it was kind of it kind of looked like a um not a suspension bridge but like a cantilever it was nuts it was fantastic lift uh did anyone not make it past the first bar in the men or the women's seats everyone made it i think everyone made it uh three bars actually and i and i didn't mind that.

I mean, I was actually pushing for a little bit of a lower starting weight because when I looked up the expected lifts for this field, there was nowhere near what they ended up performing. As a whole, both the men and the women exceeded expectations in terms of kind of average lift before bowing out. And then obviously also some of the top end stuff we saw particularly from Karen Frey. But I don't mind the light bars. I don't mind like grooving that. And you got to see the athletes make a choice.

You know, many of them were doing power cleans for four or five, six bars and some we didn't need to, we're doing squat cleans just to get into the rhythm of the squat. What was the first weight for the women? 85 kilos. Do we know what that is in pounds about 180 about 190 and and did and what was the first weight for the men uh 300 around 300 pounds range of five pounds something okay so none of the women

beat the men in this because Karen Frey did 275. 270 or 275, yeah, right around there. But here's a good example for you, Sevan. When I was giving this workout, I was giving it in pounds. Last night, we were working on finalizing scorecards. We created it in pounds. Then the decision was made to switch to kilos. So we redid the workout in kilos. At the briefing today, they advised athletes that they were

changing from pounds to kilos. The kilos that they listed in the briefing were not the kilo weights that ended up being used. I like it. Keep you on your feet. But what I just want to say is, and as ridiculous as that might sound, it's just how it is. And what I've been so impressed with is the athletes' responses. No one's giving them a hard time. Everyone's just rolling with it. They seem to have like this collective understanding that, okay, this is the task at hand and we're just going to do our best to complete it. And we'll get to the next workout. We'll talk about a change that happened there as well. And the athlete's response was just as positive.

They just accepted it, rolled with it, and moved on. Just to let you guys know how heavy that is, I don't know who that was, but she picked her bar up and you saw her bar bend. And then when she did her dip, you saw her bar bend even more. She got, yeah, this is nuts. This is Taylor Howe. how yeah look at the bar nuts wow uh any prs out there brian did you hear did you i mean that's kind of hard for you out there so con pr because that dude was so fired up after every lift for like six lifts in a row. Or was he just having fun?

Both. So it was a pull-up to Khan's latest Instagram post, and I'll let him answer that question for Chase. But, you know, because this isn't a lift that's often tested in competition, we couldn't go back to some regional, semifinal, sanctional, anything to find really relevant lift and competition for them. So we were just kind of going off of their clean and jerk. Sometimes the clean and jerks lifted really, you know, restricted by the jerk. Sometimes it's the clean. So we didn't really know. And that's why, you know, we were, we were off, which is fine. There were a lot of PRS today. We can look at cons first and I'll tell you about a couple others.

I know a 15 kilogram. Any PR is clean. That's awesome. Yeah, look at that. 15-kilogram PR from the hand. We were talking about it at some point today that he spent the majority of this past season trading alongside one of the strongest guys in CrossFit, Tolo Morikino. Their skill sets offset each other a little bit,

but clearly whatever he's been doing in iceland is paying off because yeah not only did he pr his hang clean he pr his clean period and no no it does happen sometimes in competition i think that one kind of maybe clever or not necessarily realized aspect of this event and why we saw so many prs in it when you're getting ready to come to a competition to athletes they're just, they're so excited to get going. And they had, they got a chance to get going yesterday. Like we talked about with Lazar, that was 30 hours before they got to go again.

So they had 30 hours to just sit around and ready to go. But during that time, they can get body work done. They can get asleep. I mean, many of the athletes took a two or three hour nap and then got 10 hours of sleep last night. They were eating three full meals today before the competition started. So they were fueled up primed adrenaline rushing first time in the stadium ever for a crossfit event and all those things contribute to plus everyone was having

such success early in the lifting that they're just like oh man everyone's staying in it i can't like i can't bow out of here and uh martin martin martin graham uh america switch to metric for fucking sake please uh please uh send a letter to our dr fauci martin and uh we will do whatever's safe for our people we need to run the proper scientific tests if it just saves one life i will say the metric system was much easier to work with when I was doing engineering in college. It's crazy that we're not on metric system. It's about freedom pounds, right? Hey, when I was a kid –

I said that on a broadcast once. When I was a kid, they said we were moving to the metric system, and they started teaching us it in school, public school. Oh, really? Yeah. It's either that or you were on mushrooms. Not quite at that point in my life rule that out uh brian brought up a very good point i think or chase the fact that he was um that khan was there training think about what khan got to be with he got to be with

katrin david's daughter two times champion annie thor's daughter two times champion uh miracles second place um finished uh the year against tia two years ago after coming back from a pregnancy third place uh she's been in three different uh you know kind of generational uh cohorts of games athletes she's been there since the beginning and then on top of that he's got uh tola but then he's got one of the most experienced trainers ever in yami tinkinin i mean so maybe it does matter uh well i think you got a lot of structure there too which i i don't really associate con porter with in a positive way you know he's a very free spirit and his training i think would mimic that over the years and to go to Iceland, isolated in a house with the

team and very focused, like there was no doing anything outside the box on a team with Annie. I think if he was even an individual in Iceland, he would have had a totally different training experience than he was with a structured team with Annie and Yami at the helm. And when you have someone like Tola who can really push you in those weights and those things, I think it was the perfect training environment for someone like Con Porter to reach a level that he probably didn't know he could tap into without someone being there to focus him in the training. I mean, at the CrossFit Games on the team competition, when the team was like a 100 max front squat or someone did a 100 max jerk they switched places khan was supposed to do the jerk there but he ended up doing the front squat and he pr'd i mean what did khan hit on the front squat brian i can't remember was it close to 400 something i think he pr'd his front squat and they made the decision walking out to the floor

not even in the the warm-up area so khan I don't think realizes how good he actually got in the team training settings. And I think it was, it was a perfect time for Khan at the perfect place at the perfect time. And it's really cool to see it pay off for him. And that's not a dig on the, the training regimen he has in Australia where on every other Wednesday, he makes friendship bracelets and exchanges them with Ricky Gerard.

I mean, that shit's cool too, but it's just just it's more mental and less physical uh okay um i mean can't you see con wearing like doing like in between workouts like making hemp bracelets in australia line of girls trying to get the con uh friendship bracelet um can we pull up the leaderboard oh i want to say this so they went to a tie break here in this event and this is this is where lane width might matter uh let me explain the format of the tie break first because much like um we were talking about with the format the 20 seconds one attempt and the way they had that laid out in the tie break let's just say that the four of us all

went out on the fifth barbell. We did not go immediately to the tiebreak because perhaps Seven was lifting in the first heat, Chase was lifting in wave three, and Matt and I went out in wave four. So in that instance, because there was mandated periods of time in between, Seven would have had maybe a two-minute advantage in terms of rest over me and Matt. Now he's going to have that two-minute advantage either way, but the first two minutes of rest is pretty critical when you have to go and then do five hang squat cleans at 225 or 155 pounds or something close to that, which I don't know what weight it actually was, but I was kind of, either, either way, instead, everyone who'd advanced through the fifth barbell would then be sent to lift again.

And after the sixth barbell was completed, the four of us would go to the tiebreak, which is what we're watching here. Okay. And after one of the tiebreaks, Lazar Jukic crossed the finish line and slammed his weight belt on the ground and was looking around and i don't know if it was you or derek but someone mentioned that when lazar was uh doing that the hang cleans there that he had a collision and i don't know with who but that their bars actually hit each other during the hang cleans can you tell us what happened there so first of all as you mentioned there's no chip timers. So the, the person who crosses the finish line first is not necessarily have the fastest time. The judges were supposed to start the stopwatch as soon as the athlete moved. Therefore, if they false started, it takes

that out of the equation. And that's in theory what it is supposed to do. So instead of having some kind of false start penalty, which you could also have chosen to have, they just, you know, the athletes were not told, go whenever you want, and they'll start the stopwatch. But the judges were told, when the athlete leaves, you start the clock for your lane. When the athlete crosses the line, you stop the clock for your lane, and you write down the time that's on your stopwatch, and that's the time we're going to go with. Now, it was really small margins, and so it's a little bit of human error, obviously, with the stopwatch, but it does somewhat account for

what appeared to be false starts on broadcast. That's good. And why was there a collision? Was that one of the athletes turned sideways, or the lanes weren't marked properly, or what happened there? And who did he collide with? They were uneven. Yeah.

So, I mean, the barbells, it was tight on the floor there. And as you saw in the snatching workout, they had the staggered barbells that wouldn't have worked necessarily here because the athletes needed to traverse the same distance to their bar and back to the bar to make the tie break fair, but they wanted to have enough bars in case there was a big tie break.

They never had more than five athletes and afterwards. And I want to give Dubai credit for this because a lot of times I see things happening in competition that is obviously there's a better way. And then a lot of times they just let it go and then they'll address it for the next sex that's coming up. They'll just be like, oh, we screwed it up for the women, but we'll get it right for the men. Two times, both in this event, they made a change on the fly after realizing that there was a better way to do it. First, they had the athletes running to the bar, turning around, and then doing a lift. They had changed that, and they put them in the back so they could come forward and therefore not eat as much into the 20 seconds and 10-second transition times.

So good job on that. In this case, there were five men in that heat. Lazar was on the outside, I believe. Next to him was Vladimir Sashin from Russia. And Vladimir just, as can happen, he just missed his grip of his barbell, trying to cycle one of the reps, and it fell to the ground. No problem so far, but it bounced a little to the right. And when he picked it up, it banged into Lazar's bar that was coming down from a previous,

you know, he's about to cycle it back. At that point in the tiebreak, Lazar was in the lead amongst the five guys there. But because of that, which obviously rattled him and stopped his momentum, he dropped to third in the tiebreak. Two other people were able to pass him by a small margin. He was obviously upset about it. The throwing of the belt on the ground is a lack of professionalism in the moment, but you can understand being a little heated. From there, he went and did what he was supposed to do, which is address the head judge, which is the gaucho mustache man, by the way. And he's an incredible head judge. And I wish I had more opportunities to work with him and, uh, and submitted an appeal. That appeal was reviewed after competition ended today. And Lazar was credited back a small amount of time.

I think somewhere around 0.15 seconds. I'm not sure how that stack, how, if that affected him moving up one or two spots or not, but we did award him back a little bit of time after the conclusion of all competition today. Interesting. And I guess for all the coaches listening, that is something that could be spoken to the athletes about, like, hey, anything can happen out there.

A bird can fly into you. A bar can hit you. A fan can, anything can happen out there. A bird can fly into you. A bar can hit you. A fan can throw a beach ball out there. Anything. Your rower, the batteries can stop on your rower. It's up to you to keep your shit together. I don't have a problem with the belt throwing, by the way, at all. I – you have a problem with the chase?

Here's the thing. You know when Josh Bridges would just explode as he crossed the finish line? I just kind of see it as that. You're just's just it's just blowing off steam he just exploded i see those a little differently one's a celebration the other one like when josh there's a big difference between josh running up on the platform after beating rich running and push pull then josh throwing his glasses against the wall okay because he couldn't do a deadlift i give up so he did two rounds before that one you know travis williams kicking over the weight plate plaque oh yes you know so yeah there's a difference and especially in a host country like dubai where i don't really think that's custom

it's illegal yeah uh be on your best behavior that that being said i can empathize with the frustration gotcha fair okay well and and uh i would like to say that i uh this show is i'm very fond of lazar and uh he can almost do no wrong in my eyes. I was actually surprised that he did that, honestly, just because of Lazar's character to begin with. But, I mean, listen, you get frustrated. He was probably already frustrated where he was after day one, and just his positioning there. And, listen, it gets the best of all of us. You get me in my worst moment on a competition floor.

It wasn't very pretty either, so I don't blame them. And no matter how nice they are off the field, these are all lions. There's no... Competitive as hell want to win. It's like the reaction when you get mad as a dude and you punch the wall, and then instantly after you punch it,

you're like, why did I do that? Now my hand hurts. Now you're mad at yourself. That's probably what happened. It's a heat of the moment thing. Now I have to buy a painting to hang over that wall. Yes. That's what I was thinking.

How am I going to hide that from my mom and dad? Get a poster. Can we look at the leaderboard for the hang clean ladder? Any surprises in the women's division? Who placed where here? Yeah, thank you, Susan. We'll go women or men. We'll do women first.

Women first. No, so look at the top three women there. Karen Frey, someone I thought had a chance to win this. Wayana Moya is arguably the strongest pound-for-pound lifter in CrossFit, or at least up there. And Dana Fran has an Olympic weightliftingFit, or at least up there. And Dana Fran has an Olympic weightlifting background, which she recently posted about why that part of her career came to an end five years ago. And she's obviously leaning into that here to have a top three finish on this. Why did her career end in that?

Pretty devastating ankle injury, I believe. She was very similar to Matt Fraser. In fact, was told that she would never be able to lift again or do anything competitive with weightlifting. And she refused to believe that and has, you know, fought her way back to, you know, showing up here at a pretty high level CrossFit event. Uh, Karen Frey, 122, uh, kilograms, uh, 22 kilograms, Oliver 120, and Peran 117. What do these times mean? Oh, those times are the tie-break times?

Yeah, so you see that Carlson and Howe went to a tie-break right below that. Richter, Angonese, and Rangel had a three-way tie-break. Okay. Okay, going over to the men's, the hand clean uh uh fabian uh benito sellas sellas uh first place 172 kilograms oh it was a tie break between him and reggie fossa uh the the boys were in the prediction show were predicting reggie fossa uh but no one predicted uh fabian fabian. Brian did. He did. Yeah.

Said it on the broadcast. All right. All right. Show us how well I listen. Um, four and a half reps to five though. Four and a half to four and three quarters. So interesting. Um, no, no, it's, this is good.

Uh, it was, I think it was pretty obvious to anyone who knows what they're watching that Fabio Benito did not stand up the clean fully on the last rep of the five rep hang squat clean tie break. Some of the app brought it to the judge's attention. Some people present on site brought it to the judge's attention. That's not how a review typically works. You can only challenge or dispute something that happened to you. And there's room for conversation around that for sure. But in this case, there was enough input that was coming in from on-site, from around the world, that I did advise the head judge that he might want to take a look at that. take a look at that because it was for the event win. There is money on the line for winning events here in Dubai individually. And I thought that it might be worthwhile to take a look at that. And taking a look at it, we slowed it down and we saw that he was definitely a no rep. Reggie Foss's rep was also a no rep. Maybe in Reggie's case, it was the fact that he saw Fabian was going in and realized, well, if I don't go now, I'm not going to win anyway. I mean, we don't know what

he's thinking in the moment because both of those were no reps, they were having some conversations about potential ways to address that. I'm not sure what the decision that was made was, but as I advised you guys before coming on the show, these are the results that are entered in here, but currently they should be considered. And, you know, there's not going to be a very significant amount of change, but there is still a potential for some small things to change before competition starts tomorrow change regarding a couple of a couple of the reviews like i mentioned oh okay like them oh like this like these scores aren't even final not that they're going to adjust other events but that these events the time still might be changed correct so they put because it was such a fast turnaround today and they're going to have

a different protocol tomorrow because obviously the competition has to end and be finalized tomorrow so they can announce the winners but they knew that they had a long amount of time to do that and a short amount of time between events today so they decided to accept the disputes that came in but review them after the fact. They did not want to wait until all the reviews were in to post any scores because they knew that people in the United States and Europe would want to see something during the day today. So these are technically unofficial, but they're like, you can consider them like 99% accurate. Okay. Hand clean ladder at the, also down below, unfortunately is luka jukic which uh we understand

no no no no no no no not unfortunately at all i have never seen lucas so happy after an event his one rep max his one rep max front squat is 160 kilos he hang cleaned 155 today he has been working relentlessly on his strength he told me that he's gone through a massive squat clean, um, strength cycle recently. And he was so he didn't, you know, the placement is when it is, he was so happy with this result. Okay. Okay. Good to hear that. Good to hear that. Uh, yeah, only five kilos behind his brother, uh, Lazar Jukic. Uh, and, uh, once again, uh, we, we went over this, but Con Porter taking fifth place all alone, didn't have to do a tie break, 167 kilograms, two places higher than Brent Fikowski at 165 kilos. Yeah.

And, you know, if you watch the entire event, Brent was one of the guys that I was kind of looking at to maybe have a top three finish here. And he looked really smooth and really solid all the way through. And then all of a sudden just missed a bar without, and it didn't even really look like he had a chance to hit it. So I'm not sure if that was maybe an executioner. I mean, it's not like he had a bad finish, but it was a lot of times when an athlete missed, it was kind of the writing was on the wall. We saw it, like we talked about with Jamie, where we saw a difficult rep and then they would miss the next one. Or we saw a little bit of uncertainty and then they missed the next one but not for brent it was like great and then missed it looked like he shorted his extension a little bit trying

to get under the bar a little too fast but you know you get to those certain weights and it can be like that right it's like okay this is the easiest lift I've ever done. Two and a half kilo jump is kind of what they started to do towards the end, I think, Brian. Hey, buddy. Sorry. Hey. And you get to jump another five pounds, and that's all it was. But to me, it looked like, and you'll see this a lot with a hang especially, is you'll come off the floor, it feels heavy. It sits in the hang, it feels heavy.

And so you're just like, I panic a little bit to try to get under the the bar it just seemed like you shorted it a bit trying to get underneath and that just put them in a bad position not that that's against the rules it's just that you're not maximizing your power right jace yeah yeah and it was more it's more of like a um like a crutch or like a mental thing it's like it feels so heavy i need to get under this bar faster so maybe you don't spend that extra half inch getting the bar up thinking you can get under. And then that bar lands. Look at that weight. It moves a half inch forward on your shoulders. It's coming down to the ground quick. Like you can't fight that and save it. So at those weights, that's usually what you tend to see is that one looks great. And then the other one looks like they had never lifted before. Uh, first two workouts

are pretty self-explanatory. And then we go to the third workout which is get a grip we'll take a quick quick we'll take a quick a quick uh a quick look at uh this workout had a 22 minute time cap this is the one that we were joking around is it a chipper or is it a triplet it's basically rowing toes to bar snatch rowing toes to bar snatch rowing toes to bar snatch with ascending uh weights uh ski oh did i uh sorry well anyway it had to change oh yes yes yes what happened there right right skier what thank you thank you you. What happened there, Brian? Why did they change, and when were those changes made? We asked for 15 rowers, and we were given 15 skierks. What's Fraser say about that? Classic mix-up.

Does Fraser go out and kick his camel, or does he just chill? Does he chill? He has to wait for the u.s to do that i don't know if this is true or not but the rumor is that the guy who was supposed to be in charge of that went to qatar because he's dutch to watch the netherlands play the u.s and the guy who is but who who ended up doing in his place brought the skiergs instead of the rovers I got, I would like to see someone's face when that, uh, that is so awesome. Uh, does that, um, does that significantly change the workout? I mean, you, you, you're still getting the heart rate piece, right? Did they change the cows calories? It changed the calories. And I would,

I hope Chase comes back to answer that question. I'd love to get his perspective on it. Let's ask Chase. Chase, it sounds like the guy from Qatar was too busy focused on the World Cup game and heard, and I think in Arabic, it's only one little swirl, like one little swirl. It's the difference between a rower and a skier. How much does this change this, this workout? and a skier um how much does this change this this workout first of all that that written language is fascinating to me yes like just to see it written out it just looks like like art yeah exactly like that yeah i know it's probably it's easy to read just like you'd see like uh like any glyphs but i i think it's a beautiful written language um so this like it changes the event but it doesn't it's not a bad thing right it's not like anybody was training for this event because we just found out what it was a day or two ago like it's not like they brought ghds exactly nobody got to practice this now it does make it a lot more like redundancy movement type of a things like the rower you're driving

your legs you're pulling back with the arms on the skier, you're extending the arms coming down. And it's like, it's a lot more triceps than it is biceps, the opposite of the row and the ski, it's all core coming down. And then you got to do the same thing on the toes of our, which really, when you look at it, if you want to put a positive spin, like it's a really cool twist to throw at them. You've got some redundancy between the ski and the row. Now, how well can you snatch with good technique for high volume, moderate weight under fatigue, and then a surprisingly heavy load that requires a lot of technique on your last 10. So if this was the change, like say the change we had to have with the alpaca, like that's a dramatic shift of what the event intent and purpose really was. It didn't do

that when you change it to the skier. And I really like having that ski change, but I also like, actually he's talking to JR is that he didn't like this, but he didn't like that they lowered the cows. And the reason why I like that they lowered the cows, because cows on the ski is way harder to get done than cows on the rower. So lowering it kept the stimulus of the event the same as far as the timeframe and effort they would have to put forth on the ERG implement for the concept too. So I liked it overall. And I'll say this, I know from testing and from talking to Jake Marconi and Matt Fraser, who had done this workout as well, that they were hopeful that a majority of the athletes would finish under the cap and that they thought the best times could be between 15 and 16 minutes and with the change

to the ski calories both of those things were still accomplished uh luka jukic claimed that he would win that event and he took first all right so he did it. And I'll tell you this too. He finishes, he was in heat one today, having been in the bottom 10 after the Burj Khalifa challenge. And he finishes that workout and it was an incredible workout. He was going against his brother, Yorgo Skaravis.

And Yorgo Skaravis is well known in Europe for being very good on workouts that feature a gymnastics bar movement, a pull-up bar movement with a barbell cycling movement. known in Europe for being very good on workouts that feature a gymnastics bar, but bar movement, the pull up bar movement with a barbell cycling movement. And for as long as Luke has been competing in CrossFit in Europe, he's been unable to beat Yorgos on those kinds of workouts. So he considers him elite in that style of workout.

He knows how good his brother is at that stuff. And, and I was being a little bit critical of him saying it's heat one. I don't like that. He's walking over his bar and celebrating before crossing the finish line well he got wind of the fact that i said that in a message from you maybe an hour ago and said i knew that if i was beating yorgos and lazar on this workout that no one in the second he was going to beat me dang it's cold but brian i i got your back here because those are the times i would have have said the same thing, by the way. We have seen people do that and then get past.

Finish it when it's finished. Don't celebrate before you finish that. I do think it's a bad habit, but I do also like. It's easy to text that after. I like listening. Yeah, exactly. Responsible. Hindsight.

Well, the other thing of note there is, you know, don't sleep on how well these athletes know each other you know especially these guys competing in europe there are a lot of competitions in europe they're not all of this magnitude so we don't always get to see them but these guys compete each other against each other quite often and have a really and if they don't they know someone who has and they have a really good understanding of where guys like caravis are going to do really well. And so, you know, Lucas said it was a very, uh, a significant accomplishment in his career to be able to beat Gorgas in a workout like this. And I, you know, we all agree here, finish the workout, celebrate afterwards, but to be that aware that that was

going to be a time that was capable of holding up is still notable. If we can bring up the women's leaderboard and organize it by get a grip. This is the event, I believe, the first of two in a row that Karen Frey wins. She won three and four. Is that correct? Yep. Am I saying it? Keren, Keren, not Karen. is it corin corin got cotton uh it's not that i think chase said it right the only reason i was like my girlfriend in college name was corin so i was like i feel like it's dude this this chick's from some you don't even know what country do you know what

country she's from cotton or cair. It's definitely not Karin. Okay, before it splits. I'd like to put it in a dispute to the judges. There's no way Brian and Chase have this right. Karin. There's something funky. I'm going to tell you it's it. That is Karin.

She, oh, wow. So, okay. Oh, so that was her second right there win in a row. I thought that was it. Did she also win the next event also close but no okay uh and then we have andrea solberg and then uh jamie simmons uh then uh moya and then emily rolf uh let's just let's just pause for a second here andrea solberg she's phenomenal at gymnastics i thought for sure that the last 10 reps of this snatch would stop her in her tracks but it was actually jamie simmons that

that happened to jamie was first getting to the barbell and not only did karen pass her andrea also passed her and i am extremely proud and impressed of andrea solberg for her performance on this one all right is jamie simmons also known for her olympic lifting no she's just generally good at everything yeah it was her and yonikoski both who struggled a lot more with the last 10 reps of this workout than i expected and and the spacing between this is a lot of time between first second and third place we have 15 seconds basically separating first and second between uh fray and solberg and then simmons 30 seconds after second place that's a big gap and i mentioned to the to the broadcast team that anyone getting to that barbell within a minute of someone else could have a chance to pass them by. Because if you are forced, and this happened to men and women today, if you're forced to hit a rep, and some of them

had to squat snatch it, by the way, stand it up, back up, take three breaths, recompose yourself, and go again, that takes a lot of time. And there were other athletes that were able to snatch it, drop it, one breath, get up, snatch. I mean, you can make up a minute like that. Oh, thank you. That's my name in Arabic. Nice. Hold on. Let me write that down.

Yeah, get that tatted on you without referencing, checking that. Yeah, put it on your rib cage too. Yeah, just bring a pumpkin spice latte with your small dog. And the weight that Brian's referring to for the women was 135 135 pounds i think actually after talking to some people it was closer to 145 what the fuck is going on here are you kidding me no here's the thing people this is not a cause i want you guys to stare at brian when he says this stuff because this is this is a man who probably when it says one water of uh uh with

for every one one cup of water with every one cup of oatmeal if he spills a little when he walks over to the pan he starts over he dumps like this is a guy who's not comfortable with like maybe it was 145. Loose, loose. Yeah. Like this isn't – I almost feel – I'm actually enjoying this. There's this discussion if the CrossFit Games is going to get rid of the unknown and unknowable, and Dubai is like, fuck you. We got you. Even we don't know. Yeah, yeah.

Take that. Even we don't know yeah yeah take that oh brian just let me ask you this this is gonna be a ridiculous question but uh but it's gonna be fair are all the bars and plates the same and who's the manufacturer they're all of the same manufacturer all the uh what are the things that you put on the ends to keep the weights on what are those things called collars the collars and clips are they all the same they are okay so so the and it's probably fair question since the lanes are different width we're not exactly sure what would make you think that it's not 135 even though it says it here on their instagram account conversation i had with someone someone maybe an hour before coming on here. Fucking love this.

We had a little discussion before these events started, like why do people throw events? And it's interesting. This event is put on by the crown prince over there. And I think this event is put on for his enjoyment, right? Definitely in part, yes. And also, I think, event is put on for his enjoyment, right? Definitely in part, yes. And also, I think, to showcase Dubai. Yeah, fantastic. Okay, great.

I think that's a big part of it. Yeah, well, it's definitely, it's cool doing the building run and having all these beautiful athletes there. Yeah. And we're definitely having fun trying to figure out what the weights are. Okay. So, so 10, you were basically, we were talking about, about 10, Brian had stated that, Hey, when you have 10 snatches at the end at 135 for women and 10 snatches at the end for 185, if at 30 seconds that she beat her by, and I think she got there maybe 15 or 20 seconds after. So she's pushing towards a minute of time that she was able to make up. And Andrea Solberg is not known for being that strong. Just a testament to maybe just to how well she held up through 120 toes to bar compared to some of the other athletes. toes to bar compared to some of the other athletes uh bruce wayne god is great fine good all right great uh any time caps up to this point in these three events yeah there's 22 minute time cap no but did anyone not make the time cap there was no time cap for the burge cleaver challenge everyone

finished hang clean ladder doesn't have a time cap and and uh get a grip every athlete was able to finish i fucking love this i love this this has been a topic of so many events we've covered the athletes get to actually finish the workout go figure they might not know the weights i'll give you enough time to do it i might push the competition back 90 minutes but we'll get to do it i mean great hey you know what who gives a shit about the athletes we weren't waiting as the viewer no i think everyone was loving it and honestly i think the athletes were loving it too i mean you saw con porter there he didn't care that it was whatever time it was he was he was hitting the lift of his life and it's not like it was in a marathon day either that also helps like what is that a four to five hour time window to get all the events his life. And it's not like it was in a marathon day either. That also helps.

Like what is that, a four to five hour time window to get all the events in for the day? It's awesome. Late start too. I'm afraid we're going to lose Brian. We have one more event. But let's look at the men very quickly at the Get a Grip competition. Brent organized them by… Let me find it real quick.

Stand by. I think you're there. I am, but it's not zoomed in where it's supposed to be i was trying to get it in tighter exact same workout it's basically a triplet it's a row toes to bar snatch uh row toes to bar snatch row toes to bar snatch the snatch goes from 75 pounds 115 to 185 brian will correct me if i'm wrong all i have is the instagram account um and the winner of this event uh luka jukic who called it beforehand we actually uh talked about that a little bit then uh georgius carvis carvis carvis and then i actually wanted to see this i had on

my notes pukowski and jukic both down for 1531, and I didn't know which had finished third. I was going to say much tighter races. But Brent was in a different heat than Lazar, and they finished within three-tenths of a second of each other. And that's why, if you're Luka Jukic, you don't risk it and you run across the line. It's that split snatch Fikowski was doing. Saved him those three-tenths of a second. Okay, so let's talk about talk about maybe if you do a power snatch you could have made up three seconds oh well hey that's why why was he split snatching is that the first time you guys have seen that since 2008 i've never seen that i think i know

but i want to know what chase thinks so any speculation if his groin is still hurt that's the only reason why i could see him doing that uh okay if i were not i'm okay i'm so i'm not speaking for brent but if i was just looking at what that does like if you're fatigued enough that you don't want to drop into a full squat which makes your cycle time slower which means you can't race people at the end then you would do and you can't have the confidence to drop into a power for fear of getting into the squat. Then the split, it allows them to get under the bar fast. It allows them to land lower and slow or speed up their cycle time versus squatting it. Timmy is suggesting that it's because they were short bars. I think I'm reading into what he said,

but would the short bar have play a role in that? You don't get as much whip through the middle with a short bar. It's very rigid. So what you would normally get, say, that have that snap from hip to overhead, you don't get that as much. And so the split, again, see, so if Brent, and this is what I mean by receiving the bar low. If you just put Brent's back leg forward, he's right at a parallel squat.

It's really hard to receive a power snatch in that position and stand up from that with a secure bar. So that allows him to get lower. It means he doesn't have to work as hard to get the bar as high, and then he can get under the bar faster. This is what I absolutely love about Brent Fikowski. He goes, you know, it reminds me of Dr. Dre lyrics. He goes back to the lab, and he does his work there, and once he's found something out, he doesn't tell anyone about it. He waits until the optimal moment and he does it on the competition floor. I guarantee you, he did zero split snatches in the warmup area, but he knew

that he was going to do this. And I think it's a combination of what both Temi and Chase are talking about. Brent's one of the tallest athletes in CrossFit, or at least at the highest level. And those bars are a disadvantage for someone like that. You can't get as wide as you want to to snatch. And I guarantee you guys, when at his garage up in Kelowna, and he's practiced this many times, and he's figured out that if I find myself in a situation, there's certain weights that I can split snatch and be more efficient than power snatch or squat snatch at the end of a workout under fatigue with the stubby bar. And he brought it out here. You know, he's in a great position right now. He's leading the competition.

There's $50,000 first place prize. You get, you know, it's a perfect time to bring it out. And I bet you we see someone else do it down the line because of what they saw today. You know, this reminds me of, because you're right. Like this is what Brent does is he unveils something he's been working on secretly in competition. is what Brent does is he unveils something he's been working on secretly in competition. We're in 2017 regionals where they had the 10 half length ropes and everybody would legless rope climb and then get really high and then wrap their feet. And what Fikowski pulled out is this thing I'd never seen before is he would jump up, pull up and then squeeze the rope with

his legs to help get another grip. And we had never seen anybody try that before. And then we saw people start to bring that into competition afterwards so yeah you're right brian this like it's a very fukowski-esque unveiling of something he might be working on back in the lab it looks like he's giving um camille uh leblanc-bazinet uh credit for what she did in 2014 that he was copying it and that also uh he states that those bars those short bars are nine inches shorter from collar to collar uh than the regular bars that the rest of us use in our crossfit dude he's been holding on to it for eight and patience that takes. My goodness. Oh, it's so great. All right.

If we can look at that one final time, the winner's list, and then we will go over to the final workout here. Did you guys talk about it already and agree that this was not a chipper? It was a three-round triplet? Yes. Okay. I don't know if we agreed on the podcast but i feel like we settled that in the text stream yeah it's definitely a three round

triplet yes the chipper is coming don't worry even if they haven't announced it yet there's always one in dubai okay uh ride or die um it starts with 20 athletes goes down to 10 and then to five do you like that name by the way ride, Ride or Die, for this workout, Chase? No, I don't. Tell me why. Because you're not riding anything. The bike. Oh, we're on the bike.

I thought we were talking about it. I thought that was it. Oh, no, that's Get a Grip. Yes, I like Ride or Die. It's a very, very good one. Yeah. And also, for later on, ear mark hannah carlson's instagram post got it yes rider die is very apt name for this one uh 20 athletes then 10 athletes and five

athletes if you survive you get to go to the uh second round if you survive the second round you get to go to the third round that's why it's going down it's basically an elimination event it uh it starts off with uh the echo bike and then legless rope climbs and then it reduces the number of calories each time on the echo bike and reduces the number of legless rope climbs the time caps are four minutes three minutes and two minutes uh i feel like we used to never see stuff like this and now every event has oh no no no no i approve suza suza uh well you don't have to pull it up but I wrote an article about this workout as well. I doubt very many people have seen it.

We posted it because Dubai really hadn't actually posted this on their Instagram. It was on their website when the event started, and we wanted to wait to make sure it was out before publishing the article. But I wrote an article that was basically asking if this is the, quote-unquote, best elimination style workout we've ever seen. asking if this is the quote unquote best elimination style workout we've ever seen and referenced. I think this is right. The first real elimination workout we ever saw was actually in 2012 at the obstacle course after Pendleton one and two. Yes. Oh, I do remember that. 10 years ago that we did see a workout like this. Of course, we've seen elimination style workouts on snatch speed ladder, clean speed ladder, clean and jerk speed ladder more recently more recently it seems to be often with weightlifting we also did have the speed skill medley this past year at the game so you're right seven in modern times more and more frequent

are we seeing elimination style workouts showing up but the origins do go back to that cam pendleton uh obstacle course that was a cool event damn brian you might be right because of any other elimination we've had say outside like rogues one is that okay obstacle course that was you make a mistake and you you get knocked out not necessarily like your fitness holds you back on the clean speed ladders or the snatch speed ladders you're either strong or you're not it doesn't really matter how fast you are under the the movement patterns the sprint course knockouts that we've seen you're either fast you're not. It doesn't really matter how fast you are under the movement patterns. The sprint course knockouts that we've seen, you're either fast or you're not. You're slow. Or how about this one?

No, this one. This one. Oh, right. The sprint. Right. Okay. And so all of those really play to a specific athlete. You're either fast, strong, or you have some type of skill that nobody else really has in obstacle course.

or you have some type of skill that nobody else really has in obstacle course. What I like about this one is that you get a little both as far as the big athletes get the bike and then the gymnastic athletes can have some speed on the legless rope climbs. There's an element of fitness that's in play here. There's an element of stamina across the rounds that are in play in here. And the more I talk about it, the more I really enjoy this as one of the better knockout ones I've ever seen. We were really fortunate to be able to have Matt Fraser on the broadcast for this. I do think he'll be joining us for one workout tomorrow as well. And I would advise people to go back and listen to that. He actually shares some really good insights into things that I think you'd be

really lucky to ever get a chance to hear him talk about, not just about the design of the workout, but some of the ways that you can maybe attack it and specifically on how to breathe on the echo bike, which I've never really had. Someone explained to me that way before. One of the things that I asked him about and that he referenced here, because it was what stood out to me immediately when we have the elimination workouts, you know, what happens is everyone does round one, but half the people are eliminated and then they're done. And then, you know, someone, people advance on,

they have to do it again. They've done twice the work. Someone advances on, they have to do it again. They've done three times the work. And then someone advances again, they have to do four times the work. Well, in this case, all of the athletes for the men, it was 44%. And for the women was 50% of the work was done in round one. So you're at least doing half the work, even if you don't make it out of the first round, which is better than doing 25 or 33 i like that uh jeremy eat world uh little behind how do i get in on this text that jay speaks of you're more likely to get kicked off of it than get onto let me just tell you that subscribe to the newsletter and uh you'll be uh let in yeah yes go over to the se seven podcast website and sign up for

the text yeah that's that's what our text art is it's actually the newsletter it is it i'll tell you this about the text thread um it's it's really it evolves each time basically what it is is a group of us it's my personal pool of people to summon to the podcast because we're about one-fifth as organized as the dubai fitness championships and i just fucking i put up the ring the bell for dinner and and people come and see who shows up and uh and we just changed the name i'm going to just start changing the name of the text thread as soon as the dubai uh championships is over we'll switch to the open or no, we'll switch to water.

A lot of water. Yeah. And then we'll switch it to the games. Okay. Do you have it pinned chase that text thread on the top of your phone? Can you pin a text thread? Oh, good.

Great answer. I like that. I'll teach you how to do that right after Brian, do you have it pinned? I don't need to, because we get a text like every five seconds. Yeah. I haven't muted. I can't tell you how many

times i'm at one of these competitions an event happens and i look at my phone 139 messages i'm who the hell's messing my opening and it's like there's two things 138 from this one and one from someone else yeah 138 is you guys i'm sure when you wake up in the morning there's like 462 nuts i love the uh one of them is chasing i hope brian wakes up to a thousand seven does we saw his text yes i do have it pinned at the top and and we've chosen an eyeball as the icon which i absolutely love shouldn't we go on like signal or something because this text thread does not need to get like taken out like and spread to the world we don't know i don't know i don't need big brother reading this text it's pretty benign it's i think it's chill but that's listen that's me yeah bye for the apology videos um like like brian said uh the great matt fraser uh the greatest male crossfit athlete ever

uh um you know be in the game five CrossFit game championships joined Brian and Derek, uh, which was very cool. Uh, Brian, is there an audience there? The way the lighting is, you can't really tell.

It more looks like a theatrical setting. Like you're looking at a stage, which is fine. But, um, is there an audience there? Yeah, there are a few hundred people here.

It's, uh, it's a, it's a tough weekend. Obviously the world cup's going on in Qatar right next door. There are two CrossFit competitions also happening this weekend, more local, but that's obviously pulling away from people who would normally attend, one in the UAE and one in Kuwait, which is also very close. There's also a Rugby Sevens tournament going on here, and it's a national holiday. Getting the Coca-Cola arena that they're using for this is pretty tough. They built it in 2009 because there's always tons of stuff going on here and it's a national holiday getting the coca-cola arena that they're using for this is

pretty tough they built it in 2009 because there's always tons of stuff going on in dubai so this is the weekend they were able to get it but it does coincide with several other you know sporting events that are probably detracting from the um attendance that we could have had potentially world cup that's the sport where the guys won the game but had to share the money with the girls that's with the this is the this is the time in the podcast where i start staring at jace's beard the black white ball on the ground okay uh they um let's let's look at the leaderboard or let's yeah let's look at the leaderboard of this uh and anything controversial happened in this um uh or

let's not use the word controversial, any unknown elements where the echo bikes actually turned into, um, Schwinn Airdynes where the ropes, uh, actually turned into chains. Did everything go down? I'll tell you a funny, funny story. So they, uh, this workout was brief today, a couple hours before competition began. And afterwards, athletes were allowed to go on the floor and test out the equipment and whatever. And they were doing some legless rope climbs.

And one of the athletes noticed that the ropes were whiffs. So they brought it to the attention of the, like the diameter, the thickness of the rope. They weren't consistent. Yeah. Half of them were thick, half of them were thicker than the other ones.

So they, and they, so they changed it. They had 10 ropes that were the same. They just had hung five that were different. But the athletes noticed it, and then we were able to make the change. It makes me feel better about my question. By the time the competition happened, everything was uniform.

It makes me feel better about asking if they all used the same bars. It makes me feel better. But it's, I mean, it is, you know, it's good. I mean, it's great, obviously, that it happens, but it's i mean it is it you know it's good i mean it's great obviously that it happens bad that it could have potentially been a mistake but everything was fine in the end okay uh the the men um uh lazar jukic uh one then luka jukic took second um Akai, what's Akai's first name? Agnol. Agnol. Agnol.

Akai took third. Brent Fikowski took fourth. Any surprises here? Yeah, Agnol, Akai for sure. I mean, Lazar and Luka Djukic, Brent Fikowski, those are easy picks on this workout. I thought they'd probably be the top three. And Agnol is a young man from Spain who, you know, made a little breakout appearance at Madrid,

taking second place to Lazar. And look, he's had a second and a third place finish. 11th and 13th isn't that bad. You know, we talked about that this might not be the strongest field we've ever had in Dubai, but it's by no means a weak field. And so to have four, you know, 13th place finish, two top three finishes halfway through the competition is a very good showing for him so far. Any errors that cost anyone a placement that they shouldn't have? Did you see anything like someone get no rep? We haven't talked about any no reps, but anyone get no rep for not touching the top?

Anyone fall off the rope? Anything like that? Any bikes not work? Anything like that? No, very clean run on this one. Fantastic. I did ask the head judge earlier earlier today if they won't if any uh regulations are going to pose for the descent of the lagos rope climb uh did you have to show control between a mark or anything that he said nope racing environment they're going to try to get through them fast we'll let them come down any way they want fantastic i actually love that

i actually was looking at lazar jukic come down the rope. It was nuts. It was drop, catch in the middle, drop again. It was savage. I love that. I'd love to see the games adopt that. Less safety. More personal accountability. Less forced safety.

More accountability. Let's see. And no injury. Everyone will die for seconds right chase that's right uh okay die women will kill um we are at the fourth event uh chase what are these athletes feeling do they are they fatigued that it's the fourth event or do they get a second win knowing that after this they get to go home and lick their wombs until coming into it or how they're feeling at the end of today no coming coming into this i think coming in they're probably doing fine i mean i actually think the clean ladder probably flushed their legs from the

day before pretty good especially with all the warm-ups that they needed to do with the squats it was heavy it wasn't high volume you got the the grip and the core might be a little fatigued so you could probably see these guys and girls coming into this event a little like feeling what they've done so far, but I wouldn't imagine any of them were hampered in any way. Uh, Brian, any, any unique wound licking that you saw from the men after event one, we were speculating that, uh, that could, you know, do stuff to them that they're completely unfamiliar with. Did you see anything like that? I mean, I think what Matt Fraser told me is because there was no eccentric movement in the Burj run or the Burj Khalifa challenge,

that the athletes were feeling very, very little to no soreness or fatigue the next day. Something that I hadn't really thought about. Obviously, his knowledge in this domain is far superior to mine. But like I said, the HWPO guys didn't have any soreness one or two days after, neither did any of the athletes. The grip workout, you know, could potentially be a factor here because obviously you need your grip to do the Lagos rope climbs. But I think at this point coming into this workout, what is that?

I'm telling Chase, tell your wife eight minutes. We have eight minutes. No, it's my son. Eight minutes, sir. Okay, we're good. He's watching Paw Patrol. Oh yeah, that's a good one. That's good. I got one here too, watching Sing too. It's weird. He's like, isn't your name that? I was like, yes, but don't call me by my name. Call me dad uh okay brian sorry uh uh the eccentric concentric movement not sore oh yeah so not not too sorry i think going into this

workout the athletes were feeling we're still feeling okay but you know the design of the competition here you have a five hour window when you're doing workouts. There's not that much turnaround between them. And while it's nice for the structure of the day, it's a challenge to, you know, to go hard on a workout or go heavy on the workout and only have maybe an hour before you have to do it again. You have to, you know, that's enough time where you're going to come down from it and be kind of relaxed. You have, you got to try to get something in, whether it's liquid carbs or a little bit of sugar or, you know, whatever your electrolytes. And then you, you know, maybe have like 10 or 20 minutes and you got to start thinking about getting ready for the next one. And so that's

something that if you don't practice that being in an environment here, it's very competitive out there. I mean, there's been, like we said, a lot of small margins and guys doing very well. You may not get used to it. And so now they've had to do that twice getting ready for this final event i think the order of events helps the way they put it together because like if they did get a grip first and then maybe the hand clean after that and then into the bike or like doing the hand clean first like i said it's a good thing to start it's heavy weight it's not super intense and then having that second one and then the sprint style at the end i i think they did a good job putting the events together did anybody complain about their like just grip at all between get a grip and uh ride or die no i think that for some

athletes i could see the last you know 20 toes the bar so they were you know, 20 toes to bar. So they were, you know, not looking as comfortable on the bar, but, uh, I don't think it had much of an effect overall. Um, but I'll tell you this last workout was devastating. Yeah. The one thing I was curious is I feel like in the first round, everyone is a little gun shy on the bike. I mean, obviously nobody wants to sprint 40 and 30 cows on the echo bike, but it seemed like everybody was a little shy dipping into that intensity on the first round across the board. I thought I would have for sure seen at least one person, you know, full Paulson their way through the first cows and echo bike. And any women get stopped on the legless? Any men get stopped on the legless in the first round. Did you see anyone just look up after, you know, two legless and just be like, no, once again, all of the athletes were able to finish the first, uh, the first round underneath the four minute time cap. Great programming. Awesome. I, I, I absolutely, uh, love it.

Okay. Uh, let's look at the men's leaderboard for Ride or Die. Oh, okay. And we did this already. Lazar Djokic. Luka had won the previous event, takes second place in this one. Okay. Let's go over to the women. Karen.

Oh, okay. Hannah Carlson. Susie, can we check out her Instagram uh, Instagram as, uh, Mr. Friend had mentioned. And just a little, a little note here. I don't know if you guys heard on the broadcast, but, uh, Simone Montella had to withdraw from the competition for personal remains.

Hannah Carlson is his significant other. She chose to stay and compete today and man, she have an incredible day. I had a chance to talk to her, uh, walking back from the venue and, uh, um, you know, she may not be very well known of a name, but she says she's, she's the opposite of Simon. He loves training and he's kind of so, so about competing. She does not so, um, big on the training. I mean, she does it. She loves competing and look at this smile right here And look what she had to say about the workout. That's cool. Ride or die. I rode hard.

I didn't die. Really quick. You can leave this up real quick, Suze. I just want to address Temi. Temi is saying that one of the guys didn't finish the rope climbs in round one. A little bit shocking to me that it would be a guy with the upper body pulling. Who would that have been? Do you remember who, Temi?

Yeah, she is jacked. So her boyfriend pulled out because of some, not an injury, but some sort of personal issue, Brian? And she stayed in. Oh, Vladimir Sashin. He's right. Thank you, Temi. Oh, and we actually talked about that on the broadcast, too. My fault for forgetting that.

I made a little joke with Matt Fraser that Vladimir shouldn't feel bad about that. There have been some great athletes in this sport that have had hard times, like us, rough times as well. But, Brian, you're not surprised that it's a man and a woman. Aren't men usually a little bit better at that upper body pulling? By the way, that's a joke for those of you who don't know at Matt Fraser's first year at the crossfit games hey some of the greatest athletes to ever do this sport had a problem with a rope climb yep fraser it was i mean we had a little uh laugh about it but he

said no you're absolutely right there are three three past champions of the crossfit games that have at one point in their career stood staring at the rope and not sure what to do in competition who are they katrin matt oh rich the first year yeah wow oh okay uh scott palenski uh proud of you brian you're killing it that's condescending anytime someone says they're proud of you that means they're uh not cool not cool you're not his daddy scott brian i'm sorry i've texted that to you before but i did genuinely mean that i've been damaged by dave good job on your little competition well dave's dave's proud of you is a lot different yes than a real like dad's proud he's patting you on the head not on the ass yeah like that was cute yeah he's trying brian why do you say

she's having a good day i think i saw a fourth a ninth and a first why how is that a good day uh can i go to the leaderboard if we go to the leaderboard if i did i see her you're saying relatively for her or you think maybe i saw the numbers wrong here uh hannah carlson she's in third place in the competition pretty good she got a fourth and ninth and a and a uh and a third place overall in this competition the only women ahead of karen fray and jamie simmons all right she got her last by the way i picked her last out of 20 women she's in third oh oh better damn does she know that you picked her last

that's why he's giving her love on the Instagram. I don't know. She does now. Okay. Second place is Dana Peran, the only athlete there from the United States. Congratulations. That's awesome. She got a second. Karen Frey, absolutely murdering it.

A sixth, a first, a first, and a third. In sixth place, one of, I think, many people's favorites in this field is Matilda Garns, eighth, 16th, seventh, and then a third. Jamie Simmons took fifth in this event, but she has a first, 11th, third, and fifth. Thoughts on the women? Pretty impressive that they all got. Did they all get through all the rope climbs? All the ones that made it? I think all. Did they all get through all the rope climbs? All the ones that made it?

Yeah, I think all the women were able to compete all the rope climbs in every round. And for me, obviously Carlson, incredible here. For the women especially, the ability to get off the bike early, especially the rounds went on with only two and one Legos rope climbs, proved to be advantageous. She's one of the bigger athletes out there competing. She was great on the bike and good enough on the legless rope climbs to get the win. Dana Pran was the woman that really impressed me here, though. She has an Olympic weightlifting background, no barbell inside in this workout, and she's taking second place in it, so hats off to Dana. It is a very short time domain, you'd say, though, right? What was the rest they got in between?

Yeah, but leg's, you know, legless rope climbs are hard. Yeah. Length, power, grip strength. You can see that. Time domain in between. This is another feature of this workout that I really liked. One of the most frustrating things for spectators when they watch elimination workouts is the time between heats. How did HWPO address that? The women will go, then the men will go. And while the men are going the women are not only resting but the score keepers can do their job and make sure to have that ready to go so that when the men are done they can announce the next 10 women up and everything

flows smoothly without those i don't know i mean without those long breaks in between rounds did they call did they call luca as the winner oh it was just in one of the heats he beat Lazar, but overall he didn't win. Yeah. We talked about Luca earlier being very well aware of the other competitors in the field. He also told me on this workout, he goes, I pushed it three seconds too fast on the last 20 cows on the echo bike. He was the winner in round one, 40 and four. He was the winner in round one, 40 and four. He was the winner in round two, 30 and three. He was first off the bike, first up the rope on the first rep,

but he had to take a break. And I think it was a smart break actually, because he knew he needed that, that extra couple of breaths and that allowed his brother to pass him. Great structure of this event says,i um great job by hard work pays off matt fraser matt o'keefe jake marconi and the gang uh mike halpin looks like uh hard work pays off learned a lot from the issues at rogue texas oak cliff times bracket delays all fixed and better color commentary i i really i mean i'm really happy everyone's getting to finish uh but before we go uh two things what is the first workout tomorrow

that starts at 4 a.m their time or 4 p.m your time and 4 a.m my time the order of the workouts for tomorrow has not been announced but of course why would they But two of the workouts have been announced for tomorrow. If you do see the prints, tell him I approve of the way he's running this, and I think he's a very attractive man, and I swear he's Armenian and not Dubai-y, whatever he thinks he is. He looks Armenian as all get out. I bet you he's got Armenian in his blood. He's definitely dated an Armenian woman.

Okay, so we don't know what's going to be uh starting tomorrow but listen we're watching we're watching the rise of a future star of the crossfit games and luka jukic and we're watching the decline of two great crossfit athletes so this might be the last time you ever see them compete in Janikowski and Brent Fikowski. You're watching. These are horses with fractured limbs. Pause, pause, pause. They could be put down after this. Take it out into the field and shot.

And finally, we're watching a complete unknown. We're watching the curse of Pat Vellner being passed on to poor Lazar Jukic in the desert out in the middle of Dubai. These are important things to notice, the nuances. The curse has been passed. Poor Lazar and Luka Jukic is the future of Serbia. Go ahead. And that's a clip.

Go ahead, Brian. What do you got to say? I'll say two things in response to that. One, I mentioned, I spoke with Luca today and I told him, I thought this was the best individual day of competition that I've ever seen him have. And he didn't, he acknowledged something similar saying this has been a really hard year for him and that he felt like today between the, you know, the PR on the lifting and obviously the great execution and first and second place finish on those other two workouts, that this was an opportunity for him to

show with the things that he's been working on. He reiterated that the training camp that he and Laz had leading into this was really, really good for him. And he also mentioned that just by placing first and second on those workouts today, he'd won as much prize money as all the other competitions he's done this year, which is like six or eight competitions. So on a lot of different fronts, this is really good for him. We've talked about the fact that his parents are here watching this weekend. But he also said, we're only at the halfway point, and I got more to show tomorrow. $3,000 to win. Chase, what do you think?

Luka Djokic, the curse of Pat Vellner, and just three events that Lazer has been. The Serbian Vellner. Yeah, I mean, Lazer is, he's got it. I mean, and Fikowski and Koski, are we watching? Is this the beginning? Is it, are we, no, we've already seen the beginning of the end. Is this the end of these guys?

You know, I think Fikowski just needs a healthy run. He was banged up in 2021, and then 2022, obviously, just nothing really went his way that year. For Luka, he needs to put it all together. He had a pretty decent lowlands, but he couldn't keep it from end to end from the competition. So he needs to, and you'd be surprised what that looks like right lazar is very consistent if you get the like felner right he maybe has something that knocks him down but he's so consistent and has his home run shots and he's good end to end across the

competition with luca there is a massive element for athletes sometimes when they get they they compete way better not in the lead So say maybe that first bad start was the best thing for Lucas. And now all the pressure of doing well is off. And so he doesn't get in his own head. What is Luca going to do if he's in the top three or top two, or maybe in the top position going into the final event? How is that going to affect his psyche? How's that going to affect his emotions on the competition floor? You see that a lot with athletes, the ones that do better in online competition because they don't have the pressure of life competition. I'm curious if Lazar is more of that gamer, like we talked about with some of these athletes versus Luca that does he, can he keep this loose, fun, good competitiveness when

he's now in the spotlight versus trying to chase his way up the leaderboard. Chase, incredible insight there. He referenced exactly this evening. He said he was second place after Daywin and Lowlands. It didn't end well. He said he was second place at Day1 after Madrid. It didn't end well. The fact that he was in such a bad position after the first two events this time around, he called it competing free, and he felt really comfortable doing that today now with the pressure's on and people have a little bit of

expectation so he needs to answer the toll tomorrow too you know also competes well like that is pat velner yep he does like pat always screwed up when he was fighting it out with matt and then he'd have like a 34th place finish and then he'd climb back into the top two after six events uh Mike Halpin has someone seen the leaderboard when saying Brenton has finished well let's look at the leaderboard uh before we say goodbye to you guys until tomorrow unless I unless I unless I do another brisky this evening and hop on there after your tour de beach. Yeah, tour de beach straight. Brent Fikowski sitting in first place with 325 points. Moritz Fiebig in second place.

Alex Koutoulis in third place. Don't tell me. Savan, do you remember we were doing the preview show, and I mentioned that there was one guy that everyone was giving me a hard time about picking to finish fourth? No. You don't remember that? No. No one's surprised that you don't remember that.

It was Moritz Fiebeck. Now, we're not saying that he's going to finish there, but he is off to a good start. Okay. I think I do remember now that you're saying that. In fourth place, we have… Anyol Ikai. Damn. Anyol. Damn, I knew it. I wrote it down phon have... Anyol Akai. Damn. Anyol...

Damn, I knew I wrote it down phonetically. Anyol... Anyol Akai. And in fifth place, Kahn Porter. By the way, I do want to say, notice that it sounds like Anyol Akai when we made fun of him on this show, it doesn't sound like he's going to go to the internet

with it and be all offended, even though it is probably one of the more offensive things I could say about anyone. Very bizarre. No petitions for Siobhan. How nice. Must be nice. Must be nice of all the shit that's come out of your mouth.

Uh, Brent, uh, Brent Fikowski. Uh, what is it? What a stud, uh,

a treat for everyone there to watch one of the greatest crossfitters definitely probably top where is Brent right now Brian top 10 all-time male crossfitters definitely in the top time right 678 somewhere in there yeah very cool and let's go over to

the women in comporter lots always love for comporter bringing his own special energy to every single event, there's no doubt. Karen Codden, whatever, Frey, super duper impressive. Absolutely fun to watch. Jamie Simmons at it again. Hannah Carlson

sticking it out through hard times. And down in fifth place. We skipped over fourth place. Yeah, because I don't really know her. Let me educate you on her. Okay, go ahead. Ollana Moya.

Lone Spaniard. Ollana Moya, I hope that she's able to finish this competition well. She most likely would have placed in the top ten at Guadalupalooza last year if not having a little wrist injury on Saturday. She had been trying to recover from that for a majority of the season. She did okay, made the last chance qualifier at the low-length throwdown, but still wasn't competing 100%. She did tell me she was coming into this one feeling very good.

We know how strong she can be. Pretty consistent for three workouts. Not so good on the bike and legless rope climb. I would expect that to be her worst finish, but sitting in a great position after four events. And what a fabulous country to visit, Spain. So I'll give it that. Emily Rolfe had to leave the games early this year.

Could not finish, correct? After an injury. A fantastic athlete to watch. Always is a threat in wherever she goes. I'm happy to see her doing well. 3, 17, 5th, and 7th. And you could never, ever, I don't think, count her out. This pedigree that these games athletes bring is,

and this experience is the real deal. Okay. Hopefully we will see you guys tomorrow. What a treat it was. Thank you so much to Brian Friend and Chase for both for both uh coming on last minute actually even matt souza everyone uh we pulled us together in the last hour 2 11 a.m oh my god guys we will see you tomorrow uh thanks for all the money you donated on the show that was really kind of you guys