The Sevan Podcast - #27 CrossFit Games - Let's Talk

Episode Date: May 5, 2021

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Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio, exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19-plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600 or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. Are you asking me that? No, that's one of the questions I was going to ask him before he.

So I wonder if that's something we should definitely talk to the people who schedule the podcast about is making sure we have the correct time zones. You don't watch UFC? You're recording this on purpose? Yeah. Testing it? Yeah, kind of. Maybe you'll say something smart. Did you see that David Catron's daughter is dating Brock Lakey,

that hockey player who's on the CrossFit podcast? I don't want to say his name because I'm going to mess it up. Yeah, he kept saying come to the lake house. You pronounce his name Lake, but it's also a lake and a house on a lake. But I think it's like, Brooks Lake. Oh, they're dating now. No. Great.

Brooke or Brock? Brooks. Brooks. So did you know that Brooks Lake and Katrin David's daughter are boning? I did not. That you didn't see that today and no one sent you that? No one sent me that, no. I can't believe I know stuff about games athletes that you don't know.

I'm not the most. I did see what Jacob Heppner said about you. Someone did send me that. Oh, someone sent that to you? Yeah. No one had to send it to you he tagged you very directly and uh and uh how did i still didn't see it someone someone said oh you really pushed jacob's buttons um uh what did the person who sent it to you what did they say were they nice were they did they were they nice about it or were they like yo your boy seban got fucked up no no comments they just forwarded me the clip the post so you

have people i don't know it's just friends you know i think you have people what else tell me tell me some stuff that's going on in the crossFit space. Are you surprised that Travis Mayer won the, um, semi-finals or quarterfinals or whatever they call it these days? The quarterfinals? Um, yeah, I mean, I'd say, yeah, I'm a little bit surprised that he won it. I'm not surprised to see him in the top 10. You know, he's very good. He's extremely, he's, he's, he's had some really good performances in online competitions in the past and they have a really good training environment on there. So he's probably doing that workout against two or three other guys, at least two or three other guys, who are pushing him in every workout. So even if he's not winning them, he's having 1% to 5% better performance probably than he would have if he just did it on his own.

Do you think that we can see him shock the world and win the games? I mean, that would be a shock. Well, I mean, I've, I've started to look at the semifinals in North America and it is ultra competitive. I mean,

think about the number of, of qualified athletes. I mean, 30, there's going to be at least 30 guys who could finish in the top half of the games field. I think in a given weekend that won't even make the games in North America. It's so deep. So he's got to get there first. We've seen before where he's been the odd man out in an Atlantic regional. I think these semifinals are going to

be more competitive than the old regionals because there's less of them and there's more good guys now. Tell me how that works. So how many semifinals are there? Ten semifinals around the world. Four of them are in North America. So far, one of the North America ones is virtual. The other three are still planning to go ahead live. So there's four in North America, and how many male and female athletes will go from each one? There's 30 male and 30 female at each of the four semifinals,

and of those 30, the top five at each one advance to the games okay so five so 20 total will go to the games 20 total north americans and my north americans we mean what do we mean mexico well united states and canada there's a there's i think uh somewhere around 15 countries technically in north america but of uh 120 men, they're all from USA and Canada. And of the 120 women, 119 of them are from USA and Canada, and one girl is from Mexico. Wow. So basically, USA and Canada.

Is Iceland lumped up with North America or they went over to Europe? They're in Europe. Yeah. Europe has the opposite up with North America or they got, they went over to Europe. They're in Europe. Yeah. Europe has like the opposite landscape of, uh, of North America. They have the most diversity in terms of countries represented and like the least dominant single entity country.

Wow. That makes sense too. That's no shocker. So, okay, let's go back to Travis Mayer. One of my favorite subjects. uh,

so, uh, so there's a total of 120 athletes um we'll just talk about the men right now 120 male athletes and 20 of them are going to go to the games yeah i've done power rankings for every continent but i haven't published them anywhere oh well talk to me well anywhere. Oh, well, talk to me. Well, what do you want to know? Talk to me. Who is Brian Friend's predictions for the men who go to the CrossFit Games in 2021 from North America?

Well, they haven't determined the seeding process yet. They haven't. Not only have they not announced, they haven't even determined it amongst themselves. So there's obviously the potential. Whoa, whoa, how do you know that be careful be careful slinging dirt at hq like that well i feel like if they had made that decision already that they would have publicized it somewhere because it's beneficial for everyone if that's out there okay no seating process yet why and why is that important the seating process is important because I did put a video out the other day saying what I would have done.

And I understand that this year is obviously very different because of the worldwide response to the health situation. But you know, at this point, if you're CrossFit headquarters or home office or whatever they're going by, you know that whatever decision you make and announce, the community is going to have an adverse reaction. Some part of the community is going to have an adverse reaction. So I would have made an announcement about this in January. Let them have their say, the people who always like to have their say. And everyone would have forgotten about it by now. se, and everyone would have forgotten about it by now. Now, after the quarterfinals are over and the 120 athletes are finalized, one of the problems that I had with the 2019 season is that CrossFit was very vocal about saying, the test worked. We found the fittest. And we

don't look to test for the rest. We only need to find the fittest. But I never liked that point of view, and I especially don't like it from the sports perspective because one person can't carry a sport. You need to have the opportunity for growth and development through a field of athletes that can mature and develop through experience over time. I feel like we're straying far away. No, no, no, no. I like that. I like that. I feel like we're straying far away. No, no, no, no.

I like that. I like that. And my rebuttal to that would be I think that's what they say. But what they're saying – what they're also saying in that is they don't care who is 1,057th and 1,058th if those two get swapped around. But in this case, they were testing – just in North America, 7,400 men were eligible to compete for the 120 spots. And they needed to come up with a test that was going to be good enough to select 120 people who were relevant and deserving to advance to the next round. So there's going to be a cutoff somewhere. And if you think that your test is good enough to select the 120 people, then I also think you should be comfortable saying, this year year it's also good enough to seed these people. So then you just take the athletes.

And this is a process that you can't really game the system to try to avoid your friends or training partners in this system because there's too many people and too many variables. So you just say, okay, who is number one? Travis Mayer. He's going in spot 1A. This guy's going in 1B. This guy's 1C. This guy's 1D. And you just go back.

D, C, B, A. And circle seed all the athletes. Well, do you think that the scores are so obvious that – do you think that the scores are so obvious that – oh, I think I may have found how to turn up your mic. Oh, look at that. God. Did that help? Everything sounds good to me.

Okay. Did that help? Everything sounds good to me. Okay. Do you think that the scores are so obvious that the seeding process is going to be just 1 through 20 on how they ranked in the quarterfinals? 1 through 120? No, I don't think they're going to do that. I mean, they've already reached out and asked the athletes for their preference. In North America, for example, they say of the four semifinal events,

what's your first choice, second choice, third choice, and fourth choice. And they're looking, supposedly looking at some different models based on the athlete's preference, based on their geography, based on their seating. And in the rule book, all it says is we're going to make sure that we see the athletes in a way that is fair and equitable. So that obviously leaves a lot of room for interpretation of what those words mean. But it doesn't matter. To me, it doesn't matter the decision they make of how to seed them. They just need to make that known, especially for the athletes, because not all the competitions are on the same weekend. So if you know that, you know, and there's another problem is that the athletes, some athletes who

competed as individual and qualifies as individual are also going to compete in the team competition this weekend. And when they compete in the team competition this weekend, then there's going to be a one-week to two-week period of validating the team scores. And at some point, those athletes have to decide if they're going to compete as individuals or on a team at semifinals. or on a team at semifinals. And once they make that decision, well, once they're given the opportunity to make that decision and make the decision, then is CrossFit going to say, oh no, there's 30 people that qualified as individual

that are actually going to compete as a team. We need to invite 30 more people to the next round. Or are they just not going to invite those 30 people and have smaller fields of competition in the semifinals? But all of this is unknown and it affects a lot of the athletes. Yeah, those are valid concerns so the two big ones there are or the three big ones are basically the events are on different weekends and athletes need to start scheduling yeah not and not just

their training cycles but also book hotels book flights make sure they can get there arrange their other you know other things that are going on in their lives potentially on those weekends. And then the other thing is that, yeah, what's going to happen with the teams? And it would be nice to tell people that in advance so that if they know someone on the team is for sure going to the games, they could sub someone in? Yeah, I mean, I would think that CrossFit wants to have a full field of athletes on the team. Yeah. No, no.

They have to submit their rosters, and the competition starts tomorrow for the team quarterfinals. And you can have alternates, but once the four people start the competition, they have to finish the competition. But after the fact, let's say that you were the alternate on our team, and you were trying to qualify as an individual, but you failed to do so at semifinals. But we still qualified as a team at semifinals then we could bring you in even because you're our best guy but you were just trying to make it on your own and didn't whatever you then we can bring you in for the games but i think that they should just make the decision they should just have athletes make the decision after the open and say at this point in season you have to decide are you going to compete on a team or as an individual this year because it just makes everything much more clean.

There's going to be athletes more than likely who are finding out that they have an opportunity to compete in a semifinal or where they're competing in a semifinal within a couple weeks of when they have to do that competition. And especially given the state of the world right now, that's really hard to plan for. When is the first semifinal? The week of May 24th, the Mid-Atlantic CrossFit Challenge, which I'm actually wearing their shirt.

So we're a month and three days away. Yeah, and the Torian Pro down in Australia. And those two are two of the five that are still planning to be live events. FanDuel Casino's exclusive live dealer studio has your chance at the number one feeling, winning, which beats even the 27th best feeling, saying I do. Who wants this last parachute? I do. Enjoy the number one feeling, winning, in an exciting live dealer studio, exclusively on FanDuel Casino, where winning is undefeated. 19 plus and physically located in Ontario. Gambling problem? Call 1-866-531-2600

or visit connectsontario.ca. Please play responsibly. Wow. Yeah, you're right. That doesn't give very much time. Maybe they're going to put it out today. Maybe we'll put out this podcast later on today and they'll put out the results beforehand. Okay. Back to what's important here. Who do you think is going to make it? Who are these 20 males from North America? So this is, yeah, the guys that I think have the best chance to make it, assuming that they all can based on the way they're seated. Um, and this is basically in order are, uh, stop me anytime you get bored or have a question. I'm not bored. I just want to hear one hear one name pat velner's at the top of my list noah olsen justin maderos and those are also my three top picks to win the games this year

outright um in that order so you think pat you're you're gonna go pat noah justin you think that'll be the podium also i i mean there's other guys that can threaten the podium for sure, but I like those three guys as the three most likely to podium this year. Okay. Scott Panchik after that, Brent Fikowski and Chandler Smith. Jeff Adler, Cole Sager, Ben Smith. Logan Collins, Sean Sweeney, Tim Paulson. Travis Mayer, your boy. Saxon Panchik, Samuel Quant, Alexander Caron, Samuel Cornoyer,

and Cedric Lapointe, all three Canadian. And then the last two I have are Will Morad and Connor Duddy. Wow. Will Morad. Good on him. Why have Travis so low? What number did you have, Travis? What was that, like 13th? Yes, 13th. I don't think that's very low. And it's pretty speculative that you're saying this now because you don't know which guys are going into which region, right? So if you see eight of your picks all in one region, you're like, oh, well, that screwed everything up. Sure. Yeah, yeah. This is just a power rankings without any knowledge of who will be competing against whom some of the comp one of the competitions is online and that's certainly

a factor there are without a doubt in my mind athletes who have a major advantage in live competition compared to online and the other way around wow you can see that what do you mean like you notice that you see athletes who are like… Oh, yeah, 100%. I'll give you the best example. Give me an example. This is Brent Fikowski versus Colton Mertens, okay? Colton Mertens is awesome. He's super fit, and he's won a couple of events at the Rogue Invitational last year in an online format.

He always does well online. He qualified for Rogue both years through their online competition, which was very competitive to qualify for. But when we've seen him in live competition, he's actually outperformed what I expected from him in the times that we've seen him live. But it's nothing like what he's able to do in the online format. And Fikowski is the opposite. Online competitions historically have always been bad for him. And this is a guy who thrives in a live setting. What about the factor of different equipment in the live setting versus online?

Equipment? What do you mean? Just like the different modalities that they might use in a live event versus a online event. Like you won't see an obstacle course in an online event. Sure. Yeah. I see an obstacle course in an online event. Sure. Yeah. I mean, obstacle course. Yeah, there's certainly more in play most of the time for the live competitions.

And I think sometimes, you know, especially in things like an obstacle course, you can test for athleticism differently than you can in like a structured gym format. But I think mostly it's the environment and just the comfort level. A lot of athletes I've talked to recently, one of the things that they're most kind of bummed about is the fact that they haven't had a competition experience. They haven't gotten like what they call touches on the floor in live competition, when the pressure's on, when you're going against this guy and you know, I have to beat him. I have to find a way to beat him on this workout or he's going to win and I'm not. And that's, you know, that's a difficult thing to do. Sometimes in these competitions, you find out the workouts moments before you're going to do them,

or, you know, with minimal time to prepare, um, or things just don't go your way. You know, you don't, you don't have everything set up perfectly for you that you do in your home gym. Even in the quarterfinals. I mean, I did the quarterfinals. I'm a very not competitive relative to the people we're talking about. And you know, I was, I was just able to set up everything how I wanted to, despite the floor plans across it. I can make sure who was, who was there and who wasn't there. I could make sure what music was on. I could have all the chalk I wanted available for me. I had an extra jump rope. Anything I needed was there, planned, prepared. Live competition, you know how it is. It feels like the time between

events passes like that, even if it's four hours. And what are you going to do at that time? How are you going to get food? What if you have to use the bathroom right before the heat's going to go on? And the more experience you have in the competition floor, the more prepared you are for all these scenarios that are completely out of your control in a live competition. In the podcast that I do with Josh and Matt, well, at first I posted on my Instagram,

I had mentioned that I didn't think someone can take a year off from the CrossFit Games and come back and win the Games. I just don't, for some reason, I just find that very hard to believe someone's going to be able to do that. And a lot of people were like, what about Kara Sounders?

Or what about, you know, Annie Thor's daughter? I don't think they ever did that. I think they were just saying that they got, you know, they came back strong. Do you think that there's any validity to what I'm saying? I think it depends why they're taking the year off. Because I think it's like, I kind of agreed with Matt on this

in terms of the physical like you could recover let your body heal you know and build and kind of come back refreshed and and reformed but if you're mentally checked out from this sport that's what I think is harder to come back from and that's why I would agree with you about Annie and Cara is that even though they got pregnant and were forced to take that time off, in their minds, I don't think they ever stopped being a competitor. So I think that the mental part of that, if you're checked out for a couple years and you come back, that the intensity and the way that the sport is still developing,

the athletes are improving, that that might be more of the sticking point than the physical. For me, the part that I keep just dwelling on is the fact that it requires so much discomfort and so much pain. And then when you take a year away from that, yeah, you might be healed, but going back to that lifestyle of like every day having that, you know, that anxiety, that pressure. I just feel like you just won't get back to it again. I'm trying to think in what sports and what sports have other people done that.

Did Lance Armstrong ever take a year off and come back and win the Tour de France? I don't know. I didn't follow his career that closely. Because that's, I mean, obviously those dudes are hanging out in the pain cave, right? Very much so, I think, yes. Yeah. But I, I mean, I can only relate to that in one real way in my life is I was living for almost two years in the Dominican Republic and the lifestyle there is very different. public and the lifestyle there is very different. And in the roles I was in for the company I was working for, I was basically on the job and on call 24-7. Didn't have electricity, didn't have

access to warm water most of the time, minimal diet and food selection. It's not a lifestyle that I was used to growing up. But when I was in it, I was in it and I embraced it and it was great. But when I left for a month, I had like a month off and then I came back. It was hard to get back into it even after a month. And now I'm very confident that I couldn't enter back into that lifestyle. Like that was just the timing of my life that I was embracing it then,

but I don't think I would be able to do that the same way now. All right. Give me, do you have your top 20 for women in North America? Yes. I really only care about Travis mayor, but I feel like I better ask about the women just to like avoid some of the negative comments.

It's hard. It's a, it's, it's tough in North America. The women's field is very competitive also. And there's a couple of these teenage girls that I just cannot believe how strong they are. And because there's that strong,

I really think they have actually have a chance to qualify as teenagers for the Open division, which has not been done before. But on top of the page, I still have Carrie Pierce until someone beats her in North America. I've got to rank her at the top. Haley Adams right behind her, Brooke Wells, Amanda Barnhart, Caroline Reason Thibault, Danny Spiegel, Alessandra Pacelli, Danielle Brandon, Emily Rolfe, Carolyn Prevost.

Has Danny Spiegel ever been to the games before? Sorry to interrupt. She has? Okay. Mal O'Brien and Emma Carey are those two teenagers I was talking about. Christy Aramo-O'Connell, Bethany Shadburn, Lauren Fisher, Jess Griffith, Fee Sagafi, China Cho, I think might still be able to sneak in there. Sydney McAlishan, younger out of Canada, and then Steph Chung is the 20th one I have ranked. Do these two teenage gals, do they train together?

No. Interesting. And you said Lauren Fisher. When's the last time she's been to the games? Well, she's been competing on a team for the last several years. Individually, 2015 or 16 probably. Do you have some sort of information that makes you think she might go individual again? She said she was.

Okay. That'll do it. And what's the deal with China Cho? You think she just got too old? No, no, no. She was also competing on a team and she was loving, I think, being a part of the Mayhem team. But I'm really interested because there's a bunch of girls like Chyna, Jess Griffith, Mackenzie Riley that are, even Tennille Reed-Berline, she competed and she's qualified for the semifinals, that haven't really been competing on an individual level or coming back from pregnancies.

There's kind of like this older group of athletes, Jessica Griffith, I don't know if I already said her. I'm curious to see if they can still hold their own or if the young girls have caught up to them and surpass them. There's a bunch of girls ranked just below the ones I listed that are similarly to those teenage girls. They're looking to make their mark and say, yeah, you've been the girls for a long time, but we're here now. That's going to happen at some point. I don't know if it's this year or next year, but pretty soon. We know Matt's gone, so the male is is pretty much up for grabs all those names you're saying those sound like really really you know like it's a it's a toss-up for those top five guys but what about the women can carrie pierce give tia is carrie getting better every

year and can she give tia run for her money uh no one's no one's no one is beating tia this year the the closest potential threat to her is and you don't say stuff like that i can't believe that just came out of your mouth you're usually such a like a open-minded you don't like to close any doors like to leave the door jar wow yeah and i've well and sometimes i say that because no one else is saying it honestly but i don't even think I can pretend to pick anyone else to win the games this year she's she's the one that's still getting better she is so far ahead of everyone and still improving and the thing that I always look for with athletes also is their like happiness are they still enjoying what they're doing and she

in the off season, when she's in a thick of training season, when she's at the games, she just, to me, has always looked like she's in her element. She's still traveling and doing things and experiencing the world. She's constantly finding different training environments to stimulate her, whether it be in the sport of CrossFit or in other sports. I think the couple of months she took to go do the bobsledding in, in Korea is like super healthy and important for her to have that. She's still being active, but she's forging her own way in these different realms. Um, you know, the, the situation in your life is so critical for a CrossFit athlete and she's got everything that she could want to continue to be successful for another five years. I don't see anyone who can catch her in the next at least three years

if she doesn't want them to. All right, Brian. Thank you. Thanks for the show with no guest. You finally got bored. I know it's not your favorite topic. No, that was good.