#587 – Madrid CrossFit Championship Recap Show

Sevan Matossian (00:01):

Hey, we’re live. Hey, hi. I’m late.

Brian Friend (00:06):

No problem.

Sevan Matossian (00:07):

I cracked JRO I can’t even believe it.

Brian Friend (00:09):

You what?

Sevan Matossian (00:10):

Cracked JRO we were in the flow, like my last guest. He’s like, he’s, he’s, he’s a tough nut to crack. He’s young. He’s 20. He, he he’s a, he’s got his head on straight and you know, and what we started just started going into the zone. It was crazy.

Brian Friend (00:26):

It happens sometimes, you know, sometimes it takes 45 minutes of dull. Talk about cats before you get to anything. Interesting.

Sevan Matossian (00:32):

Yeah. Yeah. Is that, was that, was that happened to you last night?

Brian Friend (00:36):

Haley Adams.

Sevan Matossian (00:37):

Oh shit. Oh, oh, I need to. Okay. That is the thing, cuz the first show we did with Hailey was two hours and 40 minutes

Brian Friend (00:47):

I was on it probably. I was probably just a bad curse there.

Sevan Matossian (00:50):

Oh you know who? It was, it was John Young. That’s what I need. I need John Young to be my co-host for everything. He’s a man.

Brian Friend (00:56):

I mean, I put you in touch with him for a reason,

Sevan Matossian (00:59):

John. Uh, what’s it, John? Um, um, John something to man. John, what would, there’s a word for it? It was gonna be facetious. Uh, there are some subjects like H WPO, rogue invitational, Gabby Manawa, uh, proven and Tia. Olivia ki stutter, debut, rogue, uh, Dubai CRI CrossFit championships, qualifier started, et cetera, et cetera that I stumbled upon that I thought maybe we should talk about, um, maybe tomorrow morning for, are you around tomorrow morning? Like 40 minutes or I at just right now, because this show, I think we should do the Madrid. I got all these notes on Madrid.

Brian Friend (01:39):

You just wanna do a little catching up with the off season lay of the land

Sevan Matossian (01:43):

Tomorrow? Yeah. Like as I was doing research, um, for tonight’s show, I was like, holy shit. A lot of shit’s happening.

Brian Friend (01:49):

You, you have availability in the

Sevan Matossian (01:50):

Morning. Yeah.

Brian Friend (01:52):

So do I,

Sevan Matossian (01:53):

Oh, do you? Okay. Let’s do a quick show tomorrow morning.

Brian Friend (01:55):

All right. Double my normal rate

Sevan Matossian (01:56):

Though. Okay. Okay. I understand. I understand. Okay. Venmo Brian, $3,000.

Brian Friend (02:03):

Yeah. So don’t double, double, double.

Sevan Matossian (02:04):

Oh, sorry. 6,006,000. Sorry. Um, okay. So what is uh, 7:00 AM Pacific standard time work for you tomorrow?

Brian Friend (02:12):

Yep.

Sevan Matossian (02:13):

Okay.

Brian Friend (02:14):

Just a little hodgepodge, whatever you want.

Sevan Matossian (02:16):

Yeah. Uh, can we schedule

Brian Friend (02:19):

Off season gossip minus the gossip?

Sevan Matossian (02:22):

Right? Can we schedule Brian for 7:00 AM tomorrow morning? Um, what should we call the show?

Brian Friend (02:31):

I’ll do it for a lease since it’s her birthday today. I’ll give her a little morning after surprise.

Sevan Matossian (02:37):

Oh that’s that’s very sweet of you. Uh, what should we call the show? Uh, uh, everything, everything cross it. Cross the games, update off season the update. Show the cross, the games update show. <laugh> the bottom line. The final bottom line. The final word.

Brian Friend (02:51):

What? The off season? Top line. Upper episode.

Sevan Matossian (02:55):

Oh, okay. I like

Brian Friend (02:56):

That. Anything and everything you could that you wanna ask me about

Sevan Matossian (02:59):

Off season.

Brian Friend (03:00):

You don’t know what’s gonna come out, but it’s sure he’s related to CrossFit hopefully.

Sevan Matossian (03:03):

Oh, how about hopper? So like a play on episode hopper. So

Brian Friend (03:07):

Are you gonna invite him

Sevan Matossian (03:09):

Hopper, Jason? I could just

Brian Friend (03:10):

Invite him when he comes on. Just say, okay, thanks. Bye.

Sevan Matossian (03:13):

Oh shit. I was supposed to send Lu and I, where

Brian Friend (03:16):

Was supposed to do a show with them. Oh, nevermind.

Sevan Matossian (03:20):

I, we were, I don’t know what happened. I was supposed to send Luca and Lizza uh, links.

Brian Friend (03:26):

You know, that’s not how you say they gotta be sleeping. It’s like 4:00 AM

Sevan Matossian (03:30):

There. I, I told, asked him if he wanted to come on. He said he would be, um, he, he sent me, uh, he was awake and they were at a party.

Brian Friend (03:39):

I believe it. In Spain, they party all the parties usually start around 2:00 AM, I think

Sevan Matossian (03:44):

Maybe later. Okay. I am, I am gonna send it to ’em just to see I, I go to WhatsApp and I go to chats.

Brian Friend (03:52):

Okay. If they do come on, who do you think will have a bigger smile?

Sevan Matossian (03:57):

Me or them?

Brian Friend (03:58):

No Lazar Luca.

Sevan Matossian (04:00):

Oh, I don’t know, but they’re both. I watched the Lauren Kale’s uh, uh, she’s there.

Brian Friend (04:05):

Yep.

Sevan Matossian (04:06):

I was thinking about inviting her on this show too, but can’t

Brian Friend (04:09):

Probably the same party,

Sevan Matossian (04:10):

Too much star power in one show, uh, off season hopper episode. Okay. Hopper episode. Um, Hmm. Is it true? Well, tell me about the, tell me what’s going on. It’s it’s over. Tell me what just happened and, and is, and is it over,

Brian Friend (04:33):

Uh, yeah, over the last three days in Madrid, uh, an event team that actually has a lot of experience organizing and running events put on what could be the largest competition in CrossFit, uh, maybe ever. I’m not sure. Some people were sending me some stats about the number of participants and registrants that were pretty impressive. And I said, uh, yeah, it’s, you know, basically like the waap Palos in Europe and they said, no, this is bigger than that. In terms of total volume, I didn’t do the full breakdown of divisions and athletes and registrants per division, but there were a lot.

Sevan Matossian (05:08):

So, uh, the most important question is, is, was that girl there from the aisle of man?

Brian Friend (05:14):

I think she was

Sevan Matossian (05:15):

Seriously.

Brian Friend (05:16):

Yeah. Um,

Sevan Matossian (05:20):

I’ll know, I’ll know her name. If you say it,

Brian Friend (05:22):

She finished 10th.

Sevan Matossian (05:23):

What’s her name?

Brian Friend (05:24):

Amy Cringle.

Sevan Matossian (05:25):

Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. You think she’s related to sales over

Brian Friend (05:29):

500 teams. That’s over 2000 athletes, just in the team division.

Sevan Matossian (05:34):

Crazy, crazy 500 teams. Wow. Um, when Matt, uh, I was watching an interview with, uh, Matt Fraser or maybe when he was, maybe wasn’t interview, but it was promotional and he called it the, uh, largest event in Europe with the most amount of prize money.

Brian Friend (05:54):

Yeah. I think that that’s, I think that’s accurate.

Sevan Matossian (05:58):

Do they have a leaderboard on here?

Brian Friend (06:00):

Yeah. Oh, well there’s a leaderboard for sure. Uh,

Sevan Matossian (06:07):

It’s a slippery site.

Brian Friend (06:09):

Hold on. Uh, some people did say it was hard to find, but, uh,

Sevan Matossian (06:14):

It loads slowly cuz it’s in Europe. It has to come from far away. Um, check the scores, consult.

Brian Friend (06:22):

I, I also just emailed you the link if you need

Sevan Matossian (06:24):

It. Okay.

Brian Friend (06:25):

Oh, you found it. I think that’s it. Uh, we go to the Le women or men. Yeah, this is it. Sometimes it takes you to like the qualifier, uh, leaderboard, which we, we don’t need.

Sevan Matossian (06:40):

Why, uh, how many days has it been since the CrossFit games?

Brian Friend (06:45):

What ended on what? Uh, August 5th or something. So, uh, 45 or something.

Sevan Matossian (06:51):

So five weeks, six weeks. Five. Yeah. Um, why are, why five? Who, who from the CrossFit games went there and why?

Brian Friend (07:03):

I’m pretty sure the only men that ended up, uh, competing were Laar and Travis Mayer and for the women, uh, Emma McQuaid. Definitely. And that might be it from the games

Sevan Matossian (07:16):

And Emma talking, there

Brian Friend (07:18):

Were some that were registered that ended up dropping out

Sevan Matossian (07:21):

And Emma tall won it. And she was the one that we had on the show. Right. There was like a last chance qualifier debacle. She was involved in

Brian Friend (07:27):

We’ve had Ettal and, and David shrunk on the show before. Yes. And they both competed there and both podium. Yeah. There were a couple other games athletes like, uh, oh, maybe just yoga catalyst, but he ended up not participating. So there were and GI Brianon also. Yeah. So only ended up three total Lizar Travis and KU.

Sevan Matossian (07:48):

And uh, how do you qualify for this event?

Brian Friend (07:51):

There’s an online qualifier, although there were also apparently some kind of special invites. I don’t quite understand. I think Luke AJU got one, but I think Laar did not. It was, they were telling me about it as kind of a funny story where I, I don’t know, but anyway, most of them, and there are a lot of participants qualified through the online qualifi qualifier, which was, I think in either late may or early June kind of during the semi-finals period.

Sevan Matossian (08:16):

And, and when you’re invited, does that mean they paid your way?

Brian Friend (08:19):

I misspoke either early may before the semi final or after in late June? Um, not sure. I don’t know.

Sevan Matossian (08:26):

Cause I’m trying to think who I saw in Laurens being interviewed, who said they received an invite? I wanna say it was Onika Greer. I could be wrong. I could be wrong.

Brian Friend (08:40):

Okay. I’m yeah, I’m not, I’m not sure how many of you were invited. I know that most of them qual came through the qualifier and there were up to 80 that could have participated in this division, which is fairly unique. That’s uh, you know, we haven’t really seen any elite feel like the elite division of a competition have more than 50 athletes since probably the 2009 CrossFit games at a competition of like kind of this love, you know, a fairly big competi, you know, high level competition.

Sevan Matossian (09:08):

It gets to, uh, 67 here for the men and it’s a guy named, uh, X, Xavier, Marco

Brian Friend (09:15):

Javi. And then all these others did not participate. And there’s like 10 or 11 men and 10 or 11 women. Some of whom are fairly recognizable names that just, they were listed as planning to be there. Some of the media that was covered leaving, leading up to the event morning Chalkup bar bell, spin, you know, mentioned and featured some of these athletes. And then they ended up not participating, which is always kind of a question I have about, uh, obviously we’ve talked, we’ve probably mentioned this before, but like obviously sometimes you get an injury right before competition, you have to withdraw, but otherwise there’s really only no accountability for the athletes. I guess maybe they could lose the registration fee, but some of ’em might have been invited in this case, if you just decide not to do it the last minute. And it’s really just a penalty then for the competition who may, you know, expected a certain caliber of field. And if a couple of the highlighted names drop out, think it’s not really much they can do about it.

Sevan Matossian (10:04):

Uh, and when you act like maybe there should be, you wish there could be something that’s punitive, like you don’t like this, you’re disappointed in this, that like, uh, that Zach George big name out of the UK doesn’t doesn’t participate.

Brian Friend (10:18):

Yeah, no, I’ve talked about it before. I mean, part of the, you know, part of the conversation when you’re talking about these events is always surrounding the finances and you know, there have been some people being very vocal and critical of the fact that, you know, for example, some of the semi-finals are very unsustainable financially right now. And for these off season competitions as well, something that certainly they have to consider is how are they bringing in revenue and money? And obviously one of the things that drives that is having big names in your field so that people wanna come there, not just attend, but also spend money when they’re there, which they will inevitably do on merchandise and food and whatever else and you know, beer. So, um, yeah, when there’s, you know, 20 athletes into the field, men and women combined that just don’t show up in the last minute and maybe five to eight of ’em are rec you know, recognizable or not notable names, that’s a loss for the competition that they can’t really do anything about. And there’s no penalty for the athletes. And I don’t know if there should be, but it’s just, I noticed there were a lot that didn’t show up for this one.

Sevan Matossian (11:18):

Uh, I see, uh, it says, uh, five there’s five events here is, is that all that there were, oh

Brian Friend (11:24):

No, no, there were eight. Okay. You can scroll to the right. If you scroll, uh, that black thing at the bottom that you can put an X on, that bar is blocking your, and then there’s an arrow that you can scroll across

Sevan Matossian (11:35):

Dirty saga, Zaga

Brian Friend (11:38):

Saga. I shared with you a document actually, did you, did you get it? I shared it like an hour ago. So saga is either a rifle or an antelope. They’re two different, uh, meanings for the word. My guess was since Fraser was involved with the programming, it was, was probably leaning more towards the rifle than the antelope. Uh, but I don’t know.

Sevan Matossian (11:59):

And, and, and these are the rank Lizar took a seven 10th 19th, first, eighth, uh, sixth, first and sixth. And that was good enough to win the event.

Brian Friend (12:09):

Yeah, good enough to win. And I mean, the points don’t maybe look dramatic, but, uh, it was kind, it seemed like kind of a comfortable last day for him relative to the next five guys or so that were battling with a pretty tight points margin. You look, there’s only 17 points between sixth and second. So those guys were in a battle Laar was like twice that apart from everyone else, because there are so many athletes in the field, two things, there’s a small points margin per placement and secondarily, uh, you know, a penalty can weigh a lot heavier in terms of event finish. So that’s why you might see, uh, like if you look at the first workout, for example, I wonder if you can sort just by that workout. <laugh> it’s crazy.

Sevan Matossian (12:55):

It’s just a two K run. The first workout’s just a two K run. Yeah.

Brian Friend (12:59):

Click on, go back it out of this thing and click on the, the bold words round one, and then you could see the times. So there were two guys at 5 39, a guy at 5 40, 41 45, 48, 50 53, 2 at 54 57, 2 at 58, 3 of 59 2, it, and then it’s like every second there’s guys coming in, and then you go all the way down to, let’s just say I don’t 45th place, six 19, you know, it’s a 42nd spread and there’s 40 guys. So it’s one guy every second, basically, this is how tight this, this workout is. And it may, you know, when it’s that tight, then you better be running a flawless event. Like a specific event. Round one is what it was called, because if one second is one spot and I, you know, I didn’t, I’m not sure cuz I wasn’t there, but you know, um, some people have talked about this as being, uh, issue and other events at times and you have to exit in and come back into a stadium where you start relative to where you’re on the floor can make a big difference when one second matters so much.

Sevan Matossian (14:04):

Oh, what do you think about that? A two K run just as an event.

Brian Friend (14:07):

I love it, but I think that it has to have a very, very exact and uniform application. So I would actually only like to see this basically on a track or an outdoor venue setting where the everyone is obviously starting and at the same spot has the same advantage to accelerate at the same rate. And uh, that there’s no bottlenecks that can occur that you can just run in a loop or multiple loops over and over again. Then like the biggest deviation you’d have to make is to go around one person’s body length to pass them on the outside.

Sevan Matossian (14:37):

How many workouts were there the first day?

Brian Friend (14:40):

I believe there were three. I think it was round one round two in need for speed. And I think there were three on day, two and two on the last day.

Sevan Matossian (14:48):

Um, are you, are you surprised to see Travis mayor, uh, there, uh, ma man, he’s got a family, uh, he lives in the United States. He’s gotta travel all the way over there to Madrid. Um, it’s only five weeks after the CrossFit games. Has anyone talked to him? Do we know what’s going on? Why would he go there?

Brian Friend (15:06):

I would say yes of the

Sevan Matossian (15:08):

Someone aid him to go. Exactly.

Brian Friend (15:10):

It’s prob I mean probably of the games athletes that participated Lazar and qua makes a lot more sense than Travis Mayer for, you know, all the reasons that you said not to mention, you know, well actually his age could be a factor in one of two ways, right? It might be that he knows that the number of opportunities for him to compete at this level are, you know, limited. And when he, maybe he does get a great offer to go over there, all expenses paid, who knows if a sponsor says we’ll even pay you just to compete or whatever that he’s gonna might wanna take those while he can. But on the other hand, you know, we’ve talked about this with guys, like Frankowski who are around a similar age where he limits his off season competitions and prioritizes having one more year to make, you know, as good of a run as possible at the CrossFit games. So it just depends what you’re looking for. But uh, at first glance, yeah, Travis being, there’s a bit of a surprise. There were not a lot of Americans that made the trip over

Sevan Matossian (16:04):

Right here. It says you took first place a waap PZA that’s in the team right.

Brian Friend (16:08):

Last year team division the boys. Yes. And I think they’re running it back to try to defend their title. Although I think there’ll be a lot of competition this year.

Sevan Matossian (16:17):

You, uh, what does that mean? Who do you know? What do you know?

Brian Friend (16:21):

Uh, just heard about some other teams in the makings and additionally they’ve, they’ve reformatted the structure of WAP. So you can, if you want to compete in both individual and teams divisions, cuz they’re on separate days.

Sevan Matossian (16:32):

Wow.

Brian Friend (16:33):

We, we talk about that in the morning.

Sevan Matossian (16:35):

Wow. Wow. I’ll add that to the list. Wow. Ha uh, has anyone ever done that before?

Brian Friend (16:41):

I don’t think so. Not, well, I don’t, I don’t think so, but it reminds me of my brother’s a college tennis coach and it reminds me of the, like the structure of those things where you can play number one singles and you can play number one, doubles, you know, you see at waap blues, you can compete as an individual. And also as part of a team,

Sevan Matossian (16:59):

It’s crazy to me that the pros do that in the, at the, in the tennis levels too, that like you see Serena and Venus playing doubles and then they’re also playing singles. It it’s nuts.

Brian Friend (17:07):

Yeah. And it, and very similarly, no one really talks about it. The teams

Sevan Matossian (17:13):

<laugh>. Right, right, right, right, right. Uh, good point. Um, have you, um, have you had a chance to talk to uh LAER since his win?

Brian Friend (17:24):

Yeah, I was, uh, I was messaging with him earlier. He was, he was making me laugh.

Sevan Matossian (17:30):

Uh, are you surprised to see him win this? And, and are you surprised to see Travis’s fifth, fifth place, pace placement?

Brian Friend (17:38):

Uh, not at all surprised to see Laar win this, you know, this is like he should win this if you’re taking, you know, and I know that it’s only five or six weeks after the games and that he’d headed he’s. I mean, he talked about it publicly. He took a couple weeks off. He spent a whole week in bed. He was like just laying there listening to Luca training in the next room over. And he, uh, did not come into this feeling, uh, a hundred percent. I put a, gave a little accolade to him. I reposted on my story and just said, you know, he’s training together another impressive season. And he responded and said, you know, not bad for, for not coming in at my best. And I told him, he looked pathetic on the echo bike in the last workout, which he agreed with and laughed and asked how I was able to see that

Sevan Matossian (18:17):

<laugh>. And how were you able to see it?

Brian Friend (18:19):

There were some people live streaming the, uh, a few of the workouts from the, um, Kaha ma Hika over there that I, that I know. So they would, you know, send, send it to me personally when they were doing that. And I tuned in when I could.

Sevan Matossian (18:30):

And, and that, that workout you’re talking about is the, uh, 50 chest of bar 30 calories on the fan bike, echo

Brian Friend (18:38):

Bike. It was an echo

Sevan Matossian (18:39):

Bike. Yeah. I know. They just call it a fan bike in their description, a 20, uh, dumbbell thrusters with 30 kilograms and a 20, uh, meter tank push what’s a tank, a torque tank.

Brian Friend (18:51):

Yeah. And then they threw the dumbbells on top of it to add a little weight.

Sevan Matossian (18:55):

Wait a second. They ended an event with a torque tank push.

Brian Friend (18:59):

Yeah. I thought it was kind of a ending.

Sevan Matossian (19:01):

Wait a

Brian Friend (19:02):

Second. But the entire document I shared with you earlier is about the programming. If you were interested in the program,

Sevan Matossian (19:07):

Uh, how could you finish an event with an implement that you can’t fucking make ground up with on someone unless you stop? What the fuck is that?

Brian Friend (19:20):

The whole workout, the whole workout came down to the bike

Sevan Matossian (19:23):

Who this is fucking retarded. This, this is if I, is that accurate? Can

Brian Friend (19:27):

You no program this? Right?

Sevan Matossian (19:29):

No.

Brian Friend (19:29):

The whole competition was programmed by Matt Fraser. And that H w P O, which is why I wanted to take a look at it.

Sevan Matossian (19:37):

This makes no fucking sense. The, if, if what I’m saying is true, did anyone pass? Can we find out if anyone pass no one passed

Brian Friend (19:44):

There’s no, I don’t think there’s any footage, but I watched the men’s final Lizar was the first one off the chest rock, pull ups, at least from what I could see. And it’s one of those competition floors where it’s like 20 lanes wide, which is really difficult for a viewer experience. He got to the bike, he got passed by several people on the bike. And then after that, no one was, I didn’t see anyone pass anyone on the thrusters or the tank. It was just whoever could get to the tank first. And basically it was whoever got off the bike first.

Sevan Matossian (20:08):

Uh, wow. Wow. I would love to fucking hear before. I just completely unleash holy hell on, on the retardation of that, that makes, if I was a fan, I’d ask for my money back. If you

Brian Friend (20:24):

Lemme tell you this. Cause since you, you have obviously no interest in pulling up my document, I’ll just read it

Sevan Matossian (20:28):

To you. Okay. I do have a, I do have an interest. I’m afraid if I open my emails, they’ll fucking pop up on the shared screen. I’m terrified.

Brian Friend (20:36):

Unha the screen. Yeah. Look to see. I

Sevan Matossian (20:38):

Know, I know. I know. I know I’m gonna open it up on another computer. Another screen I have over here. Okay. Go ahead. I’m listening while I open your, your document.

Brian Friend (20:47):

Yeah. But uh, basically over the course of the three days of, uh, the men did 46 minutes of work on the competition floor

Sevan Matossian (20:58):

Is, uh, is that

Brian Friend (21:01):

Not

Sevan Matossian (21:01):

A lot? That’s not a lot. Okay. As opposed to let’s say the CrossFit games, how much do they do?

Brian Friend (21:07):

Well, we had talked about that before it’s hours, hours.

Sevan Matossian (21:09):

Okay. As opposed to waap PZA how much time do they spend?

Brian Friend (21:12):

Glad you asked that. Oh shit. Did you see that? What last year? Waap PZA had the same number of events and the event spent 62 minutes working.

Sevan Matossian (21:21):

Oh, okay. And do you think that this has something to do with Travis Mayer’s placement?

Brian Friend (21:27):

No. Okay. Um, uh, no, the, it is an,

Sevan Matossian (21:32):

Should this turn into a programming show or should I wait for Jr and Taylor or both?

Brian Friend (21:37):

<laugh> oh, whatever you want. Okay.

Sevan Matossian (21:40):

Um, thank you. You’re good, dude.

Brian Friend (21:43):

It’s just, it, it, it was striking to me when I just started looking at the workouts and I saw six minutes, four minutes, three minutes, 11 minutes, nine minutes, three minutes, seven minutes, three minutes.

Sevan Matossian (21:51):

Wow. And now I see your document. That is crazy. The longest workout for the men was a 12 minute time domain.

Brian Friend (21:58):

Yeah.

Sevan Matossian (21:59):

Oh, so this is the 2008 CrossFit games.

Brian Friend (22:03):

Yeah. And it’s, uh, you know, it’s um,

Sevan Matossian (22:07):

What is this about it? Go, go ahead, go ahead. Go ahead.

Brian Friend (22:09):

That you know, the, the reasons why it could potentially be that way. So one, it could be that Fraser just wanted to program this way. Two could be that there was some direction given by the competition because they have, so they had so many athletes there and they did have three venues that they were competing in, but they might have said, Hey man, we have to get thousands of athletes through every day. This is the timeframe that we have to program for the elites. And maybe they said, we have a two hour window in the morning and another 90 minute window in the, in the afternoon. And then we have an hour at night

Sevan Matossian (22:43):

Is Matt’s ever event he’s ever programmed. Is this his first event? No, no,

Brian Friend (22:47):

No. They, uh, they are actually are programming a ton of events, including they did can west games in, um, mid-July they did another one, I think, down in south America after that. And they’re also doing Dubai. And I think that, uh, because they’re starting to do so many, I’m gonna take more and more interest in it to see if they’re really qualified to do it.

Sevan Matossian (23:08):

Wow.

Brian Friend (23:08):

Because it’s difficult. It’s difficult enough to program one elite high level competition. But now you’re, you’re, you’re spreading yourself out across all of these that I wanna see. Are there, you know, are there repeatable? What is this six minute lift? Am it, I don’t

Sevan Matossian (23:24):

What, I don’t understand it either, but it’s not it’s but, but I like it just cause I don’t understand it.

Brian Friend (23:28):

You know, if there are predictable patterns that are showing up in his programming, if there are trends that are showing up in his program, if there are things that he’s clearly omitting from his programming. Um, so cause if this many people are choosing to use it, then it better be really, really good in my opinion. And you know, uh, not predictable.

Sevan Matossian (23:47):

What about this thing? So the, the it’s a sport, right? Ah, I’m gonna, I’m gonna fucking come back to that first. I wanna ask you this who you said in the beginning, you said, Hey, this is the people who throw this event are, uh, some highly qualified. Who are those people? Is this part of a live and loud, just

Brian Friend (24:07):

A loud and live. They have definitely have some familiarity with that. Uh,

Sevan Matossian (24:11):

Uh, are they part of this event who puts this event on,

Brian Friend (24:14):

I think loud and live, puts this event on. Um,

Sevan Matossian (24:18):

And uh, but we don’t know for sure.

Brian Friend (24:19):

I, I think they do. Um, so involved in this, you know, and it’s one of these things where a lot of the, the people from loud and live events around the world for, so a lot of ’em are Spanish speaking. Some of ’em are in Mexico. Some are in Miami, some are in Spain.

Sevan Matossian (24:32):

Oh yeah. South. Yeah. I met those guys Columbian too. Maybe right.

Brian Friend (24:35):

South America. Yeah. Yeah. And, but they all travel and help each other with their, their events. So for example, granite games, which is hosted by, um, you know, uh, well I guess, well Dylan and, and Joaquin run it. They also run waap blues. I don’t know because it’s the fall with loud and live. I’m not sure exactly what this landscape is, but I think granite games is run by loud and live also. Okay. And so a lot of, so all the guys that run Madrid cross a championship were there. In fact, I roomed roomed with one of them. Um, and he’s the main guy I think for this one, his name’s Alfonso Chamorro. He’s a great guy.

Sevan Matossian (25:09):

And, and, and, and what, and they, obviously, their business is putting on events, hence, um, and so they need to make money. They need to survive. It’s not a fucking charity. Yeah. 500

Brian Friend (25:20):

At the Kaha. Micah, it’s gotta be one of the most expensive events to rent out that across the competitions ever used.

Sevan Matossian (25:26):

Okay. And, and

Brian Friend (25:27):

They’ve used, they’ve used it for regionals in the past.

Sevan Matossian (25:29):

Can you spell KA Kaji Maka or

Brian Friend (25:32):

C a J a

Sevan Matossian (25:33):

Kaha. Hold on, hold on, hold on. I’m gonna look it up and try to pull up a picture. Uh, uh, C a J a

Brian Friend (25:42):

Majia just magic with a, at the end.

Sevan Matossian (25:45):

Magica magic box. Madrid. Spain. Okay. Yeah. Beautiful place. See if I can share this. Does

Brian Friend (25:53):

It say what the, what the capacity is for spectators there?

Sevan Matossian (25:57):

We will find out very shortly. Bear with me here

Brian Friend (26:00):

I

Sevan Matossian (26:03):

28. Oh no, that’s the address. I was gonna say 28,000. We’ll find it in one second. Gimme a second.

Brian Friend (26:09):

I was told that there were around 9,000. Inattendance over the last, uh, over the weekend. I’m not sure about day one, but it looks some of the camera angles and stuff. Make it look pretty empty. It might hold a lot more than that. I’m not sure.

Sevan Matossian (26:23):

Capacity is 12,442. The construction cost was 300 million euros. It’s a beautiful place. The colors are cool too.

Brian Friend (26:34):

So maybe just the, you know, it’s possible that I was just seeing the P portion of the, um, stands that wasn’t occupied in some of the stuff I saw, but if there were really 9,000 people there per day or, uh, over the weekend, that’s pretty good attendance. Um, considering I think probably the peak of any of the semi-finals was around 5,000 now, of course, that they’re having so many, uh, thousands of people competing. We’ve talked about this, and people have talked about this before that it’s probably a better model for semifinals to have community events as well. Cuz it just drives up overall presence at the competition. Obviously those athletes are there, but also their spouses, their coaches, their wives, their boxes, whatever. Especially if they’re more, you know, close enough to the region, that’s hosting it.

Sevan Matossian (27:20):

Uh, where was the Torian pro held? Do you do you know,

Brian Friend (27:23):

Uh it’s um, RO uh, rod LA arena, I think is what it’s called. There’s probably 5,000 occupancy. There’s something like that. And I know it’s sold out of course, but that, and that’s why you’re checking. But I think that like that’s an event that could probably, even though it’s a really, really awesome venue, they probably could afford to go to a bigger one because they’re selling out every year.

Sevan Matossian (27:43):

Uh, that one is, it says, wow, let me share. This is

Brian Friend (27:47):

Screen rod leave. No, it’s not rod leave arena. It’s um,

Sevan Matossian (27:49):

Oh, okay. Cuz that one is 14,820. Oh no,

Brian Friend (27:53):

No. It’s uh, Patrick rafter, Patrick rafter.

Sevan Matossian (27:56):

Ah, I could see how you would, uh, confuse the two. I get those two confused. <laugh> how do you know, how do you know?

Brian Friend (28:06):

What,

Sevan Matossian (28:06):

How do you know arena’s names in Australia? How did you know that there was even one called the, the Rodney king? No,

Brian Friend (28:12):

The Rodney <laugh>. I

Sevan Matossian (28:15):

Dunno. How do you even know that that’s like unhealthy information CLO in your brain? Uh, it is, oh, this one doesn’t give you a capacity. That’s how little it is. Okay. Well that place was sold out and it was, it looked like a,

Brian Friend (28:30):

A, I feel like it was five, five or 6,000.

Sevan Matossian (28:33):

At least it looked like it looked like a triple Decker and all three decks were filled. Yeah. Yeah. Look at 1, 2, 3. It’s

Brian Friend (28:39):

Pretty, I think it’s pretty tight.

Sevan Matossian (28:41):

Uh, 5,500 fans. That’s what you said. Right? 5,000.

Brian Friend (28:44):

I said five to 6,000, so

Sevan Matossian (28:46):

Wow.

Brian Friend (28:47):

Okay. It’s more wasted information in my brain.

Sevan Matossian (28:49):

Yeah. I’m sorry.

Brian Friend (28:51):

<laugh>

Sevan Matossian (28:53):

Uh, so, so they do this event, it sounds like it was successful. They had a shitload of people there. 500 teams means a lot of registrations. Uh, how big was their, um, their open? How, how many people participated in the, um, UN qualifier? Yeah.

Brian Friend (29:07):

I don’t know. I’m not sure.

Sevan Matossian (29:09):

Is it thousands or is it like a weird rogue thing where it’s like only 200 people or whatever?

Brian Friend (29:13):

Well, Rogue’s a little different because you could pay $35 to sign up for that and you get a shirt and the shirt’s kind of a cool shirt. So I think there are people that sign up with no intention to participate in rogue just to get the shirt.

Sevan Matossian (29:25):

But so few people participated in rogue, right?

Brian Friend (29:27):

That’s what I’m saying. I think twice as many signed up as participated and the other half just got a shirt out of every

Sevan Matossian (29:33):

35

Brian Friend (29:33):

Bucks, which is kind of a good deal anyway.

Sevan Matossian (29:35):

Yeah. Yeah. I think that’s a good deal too. And I, and because of that, I’m surprised that thousands didn’t apply

Brian Friend (29:39):

More people should do that. Yeah. High qualifier, sign up, you get this cool shirt. I think they forget another,

Sevan Matossian (29:46):

You know, just like when you sign up for the CrossFit open, you get a cool shirt, right.

Brian Friend (29:50):

Uh, you get a level

Sevan Matossian (29:52):

<laugh> uh, so we don’t know how many people signed up. We don’t know if they have 10,000 people haven’t checked no, a hundred thousand people. We.

The above transcript is generated using AI technology and therefore may contain errors.

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