Sevan Matossian (00:00):
Last night, my back’s all tweaked again. Bam we’re live. The good thing is, is it always UNT tweaks itself usually by the end of the episode,
Brian Friend (00:11):
What, uh, what’s the minute in the episode this week where you’re gonna share your private, uh, text messages.
Sevan Matossian (00:17):
Hmm. Very good question. Very good question. Stay tuned. Stay tuned. I should just close. I should just close that window.
Brian Friend (00:28):
<laugh>
Sevan Matossian (00:31):
Uh, what was the, so, so last, a few days ago, we did the power rankings of the, uh, top 100. There is nothing and correct me for mind. There’s nothing like this in the CrossFit space, right?
Brian Friend (00:42):
No, I think, uh, this is the first time someone’s <laugh>, you know, taken the chance or dared to rank all the way down to a hundred athletes or more.
Sevan Matossian (00:53):
Uh, does anyone even do any rankings besides you? I mean, I, I know that, um, you have had done some rankings with, um, some of your, uh, colleagues or former colleagues over at the morning. Chalkup but is there any, is there anywhere where there’s like, is, is there anyone else who does it, does CrossFit do it?
Brian Friend (01:11):
No, I think, uh, I started doing it at the beginning of this past season and that was kind of the first time. And then it, it evolved over the course of the season where I started adding to the list. And I think just a lot of things that evolved this year, like we talked about last week. So that doing something like this makes a little bit more sense than it maybe ever has before, just from a digestibility perspective.
Sevan Matossian (01:34):
Oh, what do you mean
Brian Friend (01:35):
Fans know more about the sport and the athletes as the media, um, space has, you know, changed and evolved over the last two years.
Sevan Matossian (01:47):
Did what hap, who have been the, would you say the Armen hammer was, you know, prior to this year, one of the biggest, um,
Brian Friend (01:57):
Uh, he stopped a few years before that maybe around 20, 19, 20, 20, he sort of transitioned out
Sevan Matossian (02:03):
What happened. Did he get exhausted? I know, I know he had a kid. Did he get exhausted
Brian Friend (02:08):
With it or they moved from Texas, I think to California. Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (02:11):
Okay. I saw
Brian Friend (02:11):
That possibly. I’m not sure if he’s shifted his priorities professionally.
Sevan Matossian (02:15):
Were you friends with him?
Brian Friend (02:17):
Yeah. Uh, Armen and I worked together a few times. Uh, met him, talked to him a bunch. Um, yeah, good guy. Hard working
Sevan Matossian (02:27):
Guy. But if anyone were to do it, it would’ve been someone like him. It’s not, um, uh, Craig, Richie, Nate, um, he Mars,
Brian Friend (02:37):
Wiki, not their, not their domain.
Sevan Matossian (02:38):
No. Right, right. They have a, they have a, they have a different approach to reporting.
Brian Friend (02:42):
Those guys will give you maybe the broad picture or they’ll give you a more detailed than in depth, dive of a much smaller group of athletes, right. Individuals,
Sevan Matossian (02:50):
Candidates. And when I was making content, you could kind of lump me up with them too. That’s what I did. I was more into their, into athletes, lifestyles, not, not sort of like stats and rankings and things like that, but Armenhammer may have been right. He was more analytical in, in his approach.
Brian Friend (03:06):
Yeah. I think that he, and maybe some of the guys he worked with on the, uh, was there, was there podcast way back in the day
Sevan Matossian (03:13):
Podcast podcast or the barbell shrugs?
Brian Friend (03:16):
Yeah. Those two podcasts would talk in a little bit more depth about, but usually the top of the CrossFit world, like they, maybe if you weren’t in the top 20 or 30 and didn’t get too much recognition here, what we’re trying to do is expand beyond that and look at who could be in the next 20 or 30 in the next one to five years.
Sevan Matossian (03:36):
And, and then the other, the other people, obviously who’ve been in the game for a long time and their focus obviously by the name of their podcast is get what the programming, maybe two of the most knowledgeable guys in the space, but, uh, very focused on programming yeah. And events. Right.
Brian Friend (03:52):
Yeah. And then, and then of course also you have talking elite fitness, which
Sevan Matossian (03:56):
Is
Brian Friend (03:57):
Right. You know, focused on the, the top of the,
Sevan Matossian (03:59):
And they, that would’ve been an appropriate thing for them. Right? Absolutely. Cuz they’re more of the ESPN style sports center style show.
Brian Friend (04:06):
They could do something like this for sure. Um, they have a, I think they also do a decent job. You know, community has always been a key component of their podcast. They have a community section, they do cover some of the more political and economics side of CrossFit and its changes over the years. In addition to obviously focusing on the, you know, the leaderboards and the top athletes around the world and at the cross, the games,
Sevan Matossian (04:31):
What is the difference? What has to happen to the information? There are a couple guys, obviously in this, in the area who collect a lot of information, uh, Chad Schroeder being one of them, what’s the difference between having all of that information that he has and all of that knowledge he has and then converting it to a ranking
Brian Friend (04:54):
<laugh>, you know, I call Chad the record keeper of CrossFit. Like he has, um, taken it upon himself over the last 10 years to create databases that I think are even more comprehensive and easy to use than the cross, the games website. But he’s the only one who has those and it’s a huge undertaking to do it. There have been others recently. Who’ve tried to do something like that. But a good example is if you wanna find a list of team members from teams who have competed at the cross of games, going back to the beginning, there’s only one place to go for it that I know of. And it’s Chad, that’s an extremely difficult thing to track down. Um, and so he has all that information, but uh, you know, he, I, I don’t think has ever really, um, a little bit he’ll participate when I ask him to, in terms of predictions and projections and stuff like that, but more he’s interested in the record keeping side of things.
Brian Friend (05:44):
Uh, and the, you know, ki, you know, as you see with some of the articles he’s putting out right now for CrossFit and will continue to put out over the next month, he’s looking at, um, like the, really the things that stand out or the coolest stats and trends in different age divisions with different athletes, et cetera, over time. And, and with more of a historical context than anyone else can offer to, to do something like this is not only, not only requires a tremendous amount of knowledge about the people who are competing in CrossFit. It also is a lot of risk because, and I acknowledge that when I put these out there, you know, I’m doing my best to be aware of athletes all over the world that are potentially trying to compete and make it into the CrossFit games. And it’s really hard to do, you know, if you’re doing power rankings for the NFL, there’s 32 teams and it’s a fixed 32 teams.
Brian Friend (06:33):
You don’t have to be like, oh, what about this other team that’s coming up over here? And they all also exist in one continent. So it’s, it’s much easier to track something like that. This is, we’re talking about the top of the sport, where the top of the sport expands, expands globally. And there’s no reason that someone can emerge next year. Who’s been training for five years in silence without ever posting anything. And just all of a sudden shows up and is relevant in the, you know, who knows to win a, a semifinal or it, it hasn’t really happened like that too often, but it definitely could. And I think that even going back to the, when I first, uh, or when I did it first here, but when I watched some of the stuff that you made, where Greg was talking about the origins of the CrossFit games, he would say, great, whatever you’re doing over there in your privacy of your training, in your gym and your corner of the world, come on over and show us what you got.
Brian Friend (07:22):
And let’s see if you can stand the test against some of the athletes we’ve been trained. And that was the, the idea of the cross, the games originally do whatever you want to prepare wherever you are in the world and then show up and do it. So when I’m making this list, of course, there’s the opportunity to miss someone that I don’t know about or someone that’s just only had one or two kind of data points here or there that’s taken the last couple years to improve. But even in, you know, in doing this, I did make a couple omissions that I feel pretty badly about. I acknowledged the one about Caroline Connor’s. Um, that was just an oversight. And I, I actually, I did that to her privately earlier in the year because I have, uh, often have her and Carolyn Prevo ranked very similarly.
Brian Friend (08:02):
And I just, even though they spell their names differently, I just have, like, I just see Carolyn there. And I, I thought I had accounted for, and I had it. So I appreciate the people who pointed that out. I apologize to her. She reached out and said, thank you. And, um, yeah, she, obviously she should be on this list and she will be on the next one. And for the, men’s the one that I really missed that I shouldn’t have missed, but it’s, it is like somewhat understandable, uh, because he failed to, um, submit his quarter final scores on time was, is a guy named Y Hoste out of Germany or Belgium. Um, and, uh, he, he should have been on that list as well. And I think people get a chance to see him compete at the Madrid crossword championships and likely do pretty well there, uh, in a week or two,
Sevan Matossian (08:41):
Uh, on that’s exactly what I was gonna ask you. Did you get any feedback of any, um, men that were like obvious, like, oops. Um,
Brian Friend (08:49):
Yeah, yeah, it is. I made a list here.
Sevan Matossian (08:51):
Oh, of men that were oopses.
Brian Friend (08:53):
No, not oopses, but these are guys that, that either I considered on the list and omitted or someone brought to my attention that maybe I wasn’t aware of, or what is seemingly gonna be the case this year. Um, and there’s a lot of people that have raised concerns sometimes appropriately, sometimes kind of abrasively about it. It seems like a lot of athletes who competed on teams last year are gonna compete individually this year. And so, uh, you know, like if someone did confirm to me that Luke Parker intends on going individual again this season, and if he’s doing that, it makes me wonder is Angela also. And I did include Angela on the list. Um, but there’s no there’s been no, no such, uh, suggestion that rich is going individual, but there is for Sam corn, Y so, and it’s really difficult to kind of know this early in the season, but in terms of some of the women, cuz I did take your advice from last week and I put it out about 10 hours earlier than I did last time. And so I’ve already gotten some feedback from people, um, about some women who are going individual who were on prominent teams last year that I did not include on this list that definitely would’ve been included. Had I known that
Sevan Matossian (09:59):
It, it is safe to say that the further you get down the list, the more noise and less, I think the word is fidelity is in the list just because of the nature of the way it works out. Right. I mean, it’s just like at the, like it’s Tia probably at the top here and it’s Justin at the top with the men and, and it’s, you can do that with certainty. Whereas you get down, you get down, you get down to, you know, number 60 and, and there’s 30 people who could have that spot.
Brian Friend (10:28):
Right. And so, you know, for, for example, you know, I also have, uh, you know, I’ve, I’ve making this list independently. I didn’t reach out to anyone beforehand. Some people who I could have reached out to, for example, uh, Mike Halpin or Patrick Clark have added some comments that, um, of athletes that either I considered and left off the list, like I said, or that I had just, uh, kind of neglected to consider in, in trying to assess for all of the women that are relevant in CrossFit. But I also have, you know, uh, uh, bias perspective in some regards, when I get a chance to go to a semifinal and watch a group of athletes compete over six tests, it’s a lot easier for me to, to make assessments about those athletes and their potential, even when compared to when I watch ’em, um, compete online, you know, on a, on a, on a broadcast where I’m not gonna get to see all the ways that they move and the flow of their workouts, et cetera. And then of course there’s even there, you know, the even harder ones are the ones like Africa and Asia, where there was even limited, more limited coverage than that. Uh, and in general there’s less, less coverage and it’s harder to gather information about athletes in those parts of the world. Um, so I appreciate that people from those parts of the world, maybe think that I have a bias based on where I live. I try to eliminate that as best I can. Um,
Sevan Matossian (11:44):
But it’s real, but you acknowledge it.
Brian Friend (11:47):
Yeah. But it’s also, you know, some of the accusations are a little unfounded, like someone, uh, even Jason Smith himself from Africa was seemingly offended and suggested that I don’t even know that CrossFit exists in South Africa because I live in the us is what he, he wrote there. And I reached out to him, uh, to talk to him about that. But, um, of course I know that CrossFit exists in South Africa. You know, I covered the citizen Cape town when they had a sanctional there. I worked with the organizers I spoke with, uh, actually I organized the bot the bottom line this year that, uh, Lauren kill did a thing with this girl named Zoe, who I met on Instagram and was able to link up with them. So we could have some coverage from someone live in Africa about that event. I know who Jason Smith is.
Brian Friend (12:24):
Of course I know his accomplishments. I recognize he was, uh, in the top 26, I think last year at the games, he didn’t make it this year. I’ve ranked keel and he Henry fairly low on the list, um, for the men. I think that he was really, it was unfortunate. We didn’t get to see his full potential at the games. He’s probably, uh, better than most people think actually, but outside of Jason Smith, no, no man from Africa has ever made an influence on a really on a critical event at the CrossFit games. And so I ha you know, I’ll consider that when I’m placing or ranking them, um, relative to the rest of the world, until they’re able to do, to do more significant, uh, performances at some of these high level competitions.
Sevan Matossian (13:03):
Uh, and of course the, the, the, for me, the biggest standout, the reason why we know, um, there’s CrossFit in South Africa is because that’s where we had the confusion with the, um, drug test this year where the girl was accused of failing the test and yet her name and athlete number weren’t on the test. And it, it turned into a whole shit show in debacle. It, it is kind of funny though, that that is, yeah, I’d say funny that, that is the biggest story that comes out of Africa as a, as a botched, um, um, drug test. There’s this question. And I wouldn’t normally just pick random questions out of the, um, out of the comments, but I just, I think this one’s funny too, uh, Sevan ask Brian, why ask Brian, why Brian left out the two Chos Cho who have more experience than the Wells tins, tins twins, twins. Let me take another shot that Sev asked Brian, why Brian left out the two Chos who have more experience than the Wells twins.
Brian Friend (14:03):
Do you know who he, who
Sevan Matossian (14:04):
One word talking about? I have no idea, but I used one word instead of two, uh, uh, he said Mexican women, and I said Chos. And that I, I, uh, I was more so cultured. Yeah. I was more effective in my, um, delivery in my, in my language, my uses of language, one word, uh, I was an English major. I used one word where, uh, two wasn’t necessary. No, uh, I know that there’s the, that girl, she was in the, um, Oprah one year, Brenda, Brenda, Brenda Castro. I assumed Dave just picture because she was Mexican racist, but, um, I didn’t, I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t know any names,
Brian Friend (14:37):
Adam, his heritage, is that
Sevan Matossian (14:38):
Racist? Yes. Yes. And Amber it’s probably his sister. Um, but I, but I don’t know any, I don’t know any high level, um, uh, athletes, I don’t know any high level athlete.
Brian Friend (14:46):
The other one she’s talking about is almost definitely the other one she’s probably talking about is Paul Harrow. And I’m very aware of Paulina. She trains with the proven crew. At least she was last year. I’m not entirely sure what, yeah. Those are the two, of course. So I’m not entirely sure what, um, Paulina’s plans are. She is competing in a big, uh, CrossFit competition in Mexico that I think is taking place this weekend. I think it’s called the black challenge or the black fitness challenge or something. It’s a huge, huge, uh, competition in Mexico. Uh she’s she’s probably one of the favorites there. She was also doing some weightlifting. I think she competed, uh, has competed in weightlifting at a high level. Um, very good. Uh, and I, I wasn’t sure if that was something she was shifting her focus more towards. Yeah, you could, you could include, uh, probably Paul more than Brenda at this point. I haven’t seen Brenda do much significantly recently. Um, there are some other girls, uh, I think I need a Parvati Leah Schmidt from Mexico that I’m aware of, but I’m just, I just don’t know that they’re good enough to be on this list.
Sevan Matossian (15:45):
Fair. I, I have a drum roll sound effect here. Hold on. Uh, not that sorry. Oh, okay. Maybe I’ll use that one. Uh, uh, oh, okay. Here we go. Uh, what did the, uh, Mexican say when his homework blew out the window?
Brian Friend (16:05):
Can’t wait to find out,
Sevan Matossian (16:06):
Come back here, essay, uh, the off, totally off subject. Um, uh, no more racist joke. Sorry. That’s my I’ve reached my threshold for that for the show. Uh, what’s going on here, Amanda Barnhart, uh, is, is she leaving cross, um, cross your competition or is she just done with Boston?
Brian Friend (16:31):
Not sure. Uh, she’s definitely, definitely, you know, it’s announced there that they’re moving back home, which I don’t think is necessarily that surprising, you know, we’ve, we’ve seen this before where athletes move for a period of time and then go back to where they came from. Obviously Katherine did that. Sam quant did that, and now Amanda Barnhart did that. And those are all three people who were in the Boston area training at the comp train facility that are in new England and went back home. And I think that, um, what’s, it’s not so surprising that she’s necessarily doing that. The trend of athletes who’ve gone there and then left there to go back where they came from in recent, like over the last year or two is something that people are certainly taking note of. I don’t really have any, any insight or information to offer in that regard, but if we’re just taking at individual case spaces, um, I’m, I’m not that surprised. I didn’t think, uh, you know, one, one of two things is gonna happen. If you try something like that with the family, you’re either gonna move there and find that you fit in great, and then stay and probably stay there for a long time or you give it a fair shot and then you’d be like, oh, I think I was, we were more happy overall with every element of our life back where we were previously. And so we’ll move back home,
Sevan Matossian (17:36):
Uh, two, two year, I mean, catch was there a long time and two years is a great run there.
Brian Friend (17:41):
Yeah. I mean that,
Sevan Matossian (17:42):
I, I think it’s unfound some of the, the shit people say about Ben Burer on. No, no one’s ever like, and, and not a lot of people do. I don’t mean to suggest a lot of people do, but I know, I know it’s kind of fun to, for some people to pick on him and I don’t see they pick on him, but I, I, it always seems vapid to me. Like, there’s no, there, there, like, dude, great athletes are going to him for a fucking reason.
Brian Friend (18:02):
Yeah. And we’ll, we’ll see if they continue to, or if that’s something that he continues to want to do. Um, you know, it’s, uh, it’s always kind of been this question when you, when you see these coaches, these high level coaches, is there, you know, is there, what is the difference between someone who can take an athlete from wherever they are and bring them to the, you know, and wherever they are, meaning outside of a games qualification, or not necessarily relevant on a global scale of competitive CrossFit to being re recognizable and relevant at the CrossFit games, or to take someone who’s already had some success in the sport and is kind of well known, but is obviously seeking to improve that and then bring them from a 20th place to a top five, finish at the games or something along those lines. And, uh, it’s, it’s similar with business, right.
Brian Friend (18:48):
You know, and people talked about this a lot when Glassman, uh, sold the company and Eric Rosa came into the picture of, well, it’s one thing to bring a company from zero to, um, a million or zero to 10 million. But what do you, what do you, what does it take a different type of owner or leader or coach to go from 10 million to a billion or from a billion to 10 billion, like at the different levels of growth, right? Do you need a new leader, a new coach. And I think that that’s what, you know, people are always experimenting with in this sport. So Amanda Barnhart was already good. She went to compre. She continued to be pretty good. She had a regression this year on the leaderboard. Is that the reason that she’s moving? I don’t know. Or did she say two years was, was a good run, is a fair shot. We didn’t like living in Boston that much, this actually has nothing to do with training. And we’re going back home.
Sevan Matossian (19:35):
Um, for those of you who don’t know who aren’t from the United States, um, Boston is a, uh, psychotic city. I say that with fucking as much objectiveness as I possibly can. It’s not, I’m not saying everyone there is psychotic, but it’s, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a city with the broken soul. There. It is a group of very, very
Brian Friend (19:55):
Losts if you had to live in either Portland, Oregon, oh, fuck. Or Boston Massa.
Sevan Matossian (20:03):
Oh, fuck.
Brian Friend (20:06):
Tough, tough pick for you,
Sevan Matossian (20:12):
Dude, dude, dude,
Brian Friend (20:15):
Should
Sevan Matossian (20:15):
We get the list? It it’s bad. It’s bad. People it’s bad. And by that, I mean, there’s not a lot of inspirational characters there. It’s, it’s not, they, they’re not hard working, um, productive, ethical, moral people. It, it is a, uh, it, it is a bad place and, and, um, and, and the drugs are the drug problem. Both of those cities is running beyond rampant and it’s being supported by the government. It’s, it’s, it’s a weird, those are they’re weird situations, man. And, you know, relative to Mumbai or fucking, um, uh, Somalia. Yeah. Maybe it’s not so bad. So it places, and I’ve been to a lot of fucked up places. So, but Boston is really, really oh yeah. Bo you think Boston’s better than New York, LA San Francisco, Portland. God, I hope you’re right, Jake, cuz it’s bad, dude. The people there, those are bad people there. Those are really, really nasty. Uh, I mean they’re, they’re, they’re just on the fringe of being Nazis dude and I don’t, and I don’t use that term like loosely. Okay. That nonsense I’m not ever going to Boston ever again. Um, so you put this list together. Did we did the men first, top 100 men. Did you have the men done first? And did, did you learn, who did you do first? The men or the women?
Brian Friend (21:32):
Men then women.
Sevan Matossian (21:33):
Okay. And so would you say that the, did you learn anything from doing the top 100 men that you were like, okay, I’m not, I’m not making that mistake again. I’m gonna do this different, I’m gonna do the women like this.
Brian Friend (21:44):
Not really. Um, I, I mentioned it last week that I, I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get to 125 women that I thought were, you know, notable or recognizable enough, but that’s not the case at all. In fact, in with the, uh, comments that people have already provided, uh, on my post there, I might, I’m now up to 150 women actually, I have an extra 25 that I’ve added that I’ll consider for the next iteration of this. So there’s plenty of women that are competitive in this sport as well.
Sevan Matossian (22:15):
Um, why did you think, why did you think that may about the women
Brian Friend (22:20):
Be
Sevan Matossian (22:20):
Well originally going to it
Brian Friend (22:21):
Because there’s, um, I’ve talked about this frequently is that there’s just, there’s Le less depth in the women’s competition in the men’s competition and not, not necessarily talking about at the top of the field, I’m talking about outside of games, qualifying spots. So I think that, for example, in north American men, um, when you’re qualifying 120 to quarter finals, almost anyone in the top 500 in men in quarter finals could be slotted into those last five spots at each semifinal and do just as well as most of those last five guys that got in. Wow. So there’s like maybe, you know, 400 guys that it’s, the margins are just what shows up in the programming. Did I have a good weekend and execution? Um, you know, what, whatever their training was just, just perfect to get those last spots, whereas in the women’s side, and I’m not obviously not taking anything away from any of these women, but you’re still seeing people like Jen, Ryan and Rebecca VO Miller who are in their forties and obviously competitive in that master’s division that are not just qualifying for the games in north America, but qualifying by like 40 and 50 spots.
Brian Friend (23:25):
And so I just, I don’t see the depth yet in the women’s field that I do on the men’s field on the fringes. So I wasn’t sure, um, how this would go if I started pushing towards a hundred and 125 names, but it turns out that there are, and you know, we can look at the bottom of the list that at least for me, there are plenty of names in that region that are ath of athletes that I’m excited and curious about for the next couple years.
Sevan Matossian (23:52):
I, I, I I’ve cracked a lot of jokes about, uh, the Atlas games and, and maybe that’s a good example and it’s, it’s a little inappropriate or, or misplaced because it, the men’s division and maybe this ties with what you’re saying, the men’s division, there was a stack division, it was the women’s division that was less, far less competitive. Right. And so basically what you’re saying, well, if you say there’s 500 men, how many women would you say
Brian Friend (24:20):
I’m well, but basically what, what I’m saying is that they don’t even need 120 quarter final spots. Okay. The exception to that was Bailey rail last year, which was a total anomaly, in my opinion. I mean, she didn’t even make the top one 20 and then they got, she got a back fill and ends up making the top 20 at the games. I don’t think that I, I don’t think that will ever happen again personally, but, um, I guess you never know, and maybe she, you know, she had a, I, I don’t, I don’t know what happened there really, but, um, yeah.
Sevan Matossian (24:48):
Uh, I, I don’t understand what, what, uh, Mr. Watkins, uh, from Lawnchair leader boarding says, I did a comparison yesterday. There are about three guys who are way out of the range at the bottom of everyone else at the games. Uh, do you know what? I don’t even know what that means. Yeah,
Brian Friend (25:03):
No.
Sevan Matossian (25:04):
Okay. I wish I did though. Sometimes he says some smart shit often it’s too smart for me and you it’s too smart and you need more words. I will pull up your, uh, Instagram, hopefully not show my text messages. Maybe I can make this bigger, uh, let, just, let’s just dig in right at the top. So are once again, just really quickly tell us the power rankings are, these are the, the women that you think are the best in the world right now at CrossFit in the order,
Brian Friend (25:36):
Not necessarily that, okay, these are the power rankings for the 20 22, 20 23 season. And I think that that’s where a lot of people’s frustrations are misguided. So obviously if you’re just looking at, at what happened last year, um, Daniel, Brandon could be ahead of Haley Adam and Emma Lawson, for example. So, but, and I’m not discounting what Daniel Brandon did at the games last year. In that case, I’m saying, this is a few, like this is a power rankings for the upcoming season. So I’m assuming obviously that they’re competing and then if they are competing, I’m trying to assess what’s their potential. And that’s based on obviously what they’ve done, what I think they’re going to do or can do, uh, their age, where their training is, how consistently they’ve been training at that place. Maybe some things that I know through private conversations, sometimes it’s just an, uh, inference or a gut feeling.
Brian Friend (26:29):
And, you know, but some of the athletes that I don’t have as much information about, but this is a forward looking power rankings. So, you know, uh, kinda not that it’s a great comparison, but like after the madness tournament, N NCAA a lot of the seniors graduate. And so the makeup of the team’s changes well, in some of these cases, the makeup of the athlete’s competitive environment changes year to year. And it’s really hard to account for all of those changes. I think, um, Patrick Clark, for example mentioned that I had, uh, someone included somewhere on the list that was, uh, recently pregnant or something like that. Well, obviously I didn’t know that, and that would completely change my assessment of, of her on this list. So those types of things,
Sevan Matossian (27:10):
The, the one that stands out to me the most, and it based on what you just said on your evaluation is number five, Emma Lawson. If this is supposed to be more than what you, you ranked on more than just last year’s finish of the games. If you wanna know how people are ranked by finishing of the games, just go click over to the game site. And if these are the rankings you want, then here they are. These are the fittest people in the world by order Tia Mallory, O’Brien Laura, HVAD Daniel, Brandon Brook, Wells, Emma loss. But if you, if you want a more comprehensive look based on a, a full season of waza and Dubais and previous competition experience and someone to evaluate on Adrian’s programming versus Dave’s, this is the list, right?
Brian Friend (27:57):
Yeah.
Sevan Matossian (27:58):
Then how the fuck does Emma Lawson break the top 10? You
Brian Friend (28:03):
Think she should be outside the top 10?
Sevan Matossian (28:04):
I, I, I, I don’t I’m, I don’t know. I don’t know how to evaluate her.
Brian Friend (28:09):
She doesn’t
Sevan Matossian (28:10):
Seem, she doesn’t even seem real to me. How the fuck did she do what she did? I don’t even, I can’t even get my head wrapped around it.
Brian Friend (28:15):
Well, so this, you know, this is the thing we were talking about, Emma, obviously prior to the games as well. And we had some sample sizes we had, and
Sevan Matossian (28:23):
She came from Atlas, right?
Brian Friend (28:25):
Yeah,
Sevan Matossian (28:25):
Yeah. Of all places had
Brian Friend (28:26):
To come. You know, we had known that she had dominated in the teenage division and sometimes people would say, well, dominating the teenage teenage division doesn’t translate to doing well in the individual competition, but in the case of the women, it does, we saw Hailey Adams transition from the individual competition as a teenager or from the teenage two individual. Very well. We saw L Obrien do that. We saw Emma Carey do that. And now we’ve seen Emma Lawson do that. And we’ll get to Olivia curse setter on this list on the next slide. And so there is a noticeable trend now of, of the female teenage winners in recent years, being able to almost seamlessly transition into relevance in the individual competition, which is incredibly impressive. And, uh, something that I don’t think you can ignore. The second data point that we have for her was at Dubai last year.
Brian Friend (29:14):
And I talked about how that Dubai field wasn’t the strongest ever on the women’s side. She did finish in the top 10. She did beat Teri, Hal good daughter there. She also lost several women that she ended up beating at the games this year, but that was really her first time putting her foot out there and taking a live competition, competitive experience at a high level, with a lot of money on the line against the, you know, the top tier of women individual open women’s field. She did. Okay. Then we saw her compete at semifinals. And I talked about that. Yes, that semi final wasn’t great. Outside of her, not a single one of the analysts coming into the crossword games, even considered ranking any of those other four qualifying athletes in the top 20. None of them finished in the top 20. I think Prevo was next best at 23. So it wasn’t a great field for her to test her merit against she dominated. And that’s great. And if.
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