Europe Is Coming
Europe Is Coming
Weekly Update - Mad Fitness Festival/Syndicate Crown Review
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Hello everyone. Welcome back to the Europe is Coming podcast. Apologies we weren't on last week. We had a programming live in our place. My name's Adam Jules, and as ever, I'm joined by Jonathan Morton. Hello, John. How are you?
SPEAKER_01I'm good. I'm good. We're still in uh the semi-final period. Yeah. A long period.
SPEAKER_00Well, we've we've done all of the in-person stuff now. So we've got all the qualifiers out of the in-person, but yeah, we've got this online to go. And I think the teams start now, right?
SPEAKER_01And then next week it's individuals or Yeah, I think teams were this weekend, and then I definitely know individuals is this like teams would just pass and then individuals happen this weekend.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so so all to play for, and there's there's a lot of individuals still to qualify. I was looking down the a bit of a list the other day, and there's a lot of indie still uh still to go, huh?
SPEAKER_01It's stacked, and uh you know like we say, when you start looking at that field of just how many athletes you need to get through, it's gonna be tough to qualify. You're gonna need the workouts to play out in your favour, and that's for each and every one of them. You know, has it got a heavy bias? Has it got conditioning to etc, etc.? You'll you'll probably see a different group of athletes go through. Like, and you know, you've got multiple time winning games athletes in there, and even still it might be tough.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Have you got any anyone in particular that you think we're gonna see see come through? Have you got any favourites?
SPEAKER_01Honestly, I think it just depends on the the programming. Like, so you go if you if you go super heavy, say deadlift, you you've got three athletes like Colin Bosshard, John Okowski, even Colton Mertens, who okay, you put like a super heavy deadlift like they had in the the Masters, that can take those, start to take those guys out. But then if that's not in there, you've got those three guys also tend to excel at the classic online style workouts, so you think those in there. You've got to put Justin Madeiris in just because he's won the games twice. So there's no way you can't play him in with that list. I I think there's probably like 15 names on the list that I wouldn't be surprised they went through. So for every place, you you have at least two athletes who are like who could take that place.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. And you were at the Mad Fitness Festival last weekend? Weekend before, sorry. Was it last week? Yeah, it's uh yeah, like all glaring into one with me. It is now how was how was it?
SPEAKER_01It was excellent. You know, I'm obviously biased, and the feedback well is interesting, you know. I I I searched for the feedback from across all the divisions and and it was really interesting to hear people going through the weekend. I was super happy with how the race has played out. Because, you know, you do all the work on paper, but you don't know how it's going to play out on the floor. And the snatch ladder, we had a lot of pushback on for uh for for a number of reasons. But then especially seeing Agnol finish, he like went through the ladder, he failed 120, and that would have that maybe even taken him out of the games spot or at least been close. Then got through, then makes the the final bar, gets a couple of overhead squats in, and then his uh reaction after was just like so epic. And it's I think it just makes the competition, then all of a sudden, in the again a workout, we had a lot of back and forth on getting the permissions to do this strict press rope climb. The races at the end with with uh Callum, with Yonne, with Annol, it just played out, and then the final, not knowing what's going to happen, who's gonna qualify. It was it was really exciting. Sorry, my phone was just uh just going off.
SPEAKER_00Just showing how uh how busy this period is for you at the moment. Um we've a slightly condensed recording window tonight, team. So so apologies for that. But yeah, John is John is a man in demand at the moment.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's a busy period, but you know, it's nice, there's some cool opportunities that we're we're trying to make the most of. But I'm happy we kept the consistency of the podcast.
SPEAKER_00Yes, me too, as always. Um, so I'll bring up on screen two seconds. So qualifiers coming out of the Mad Fitness Festival. Um, for the men, we had Anna Lakai, um, and then Gabby Megala came first for the ladies, uh, and CrossFit Aska Krieger for the team that qualified. Um, and then Louis Cuella came first. Thank you for always keeping me honest with the pronunciation there, John. Lucy McGonagall, who I think a lot of us expected to get through and had kind of went to a few semifinals and and and made it through Mad. So good to see her um after her rookie year. Was it last year, I think her rookie year, kind of going back back to back. Callum coming in in third place, Cannon Clements, uh, and then Ella Wilkinson, another Brit. So my bias is is is complete there. Now we've got Ella making it as well, who who seems to be, and we talked about it often of the WFP episodes, but seems to be really starting to growing into the elite competition now and and and being a bit of a mainstay in top heats and and in and around the games conversation.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and the nice thing was so we we can go through I I think in a similar vein, maybe not as extreme as Turian, but you know, you could have taken this down to fourth, at least fourth place, and all of those athletes would be legit at the game. So it was like the the level for these three spots was super high. And you know, I it was great seeing Ella all weekend, she really really impressed me on the floor, and even in workouts that I think that classically she might not have done well at, but she really really seemed to have improved. Um there was some controversy, I think it came out at the start of the week with the third place. I you know, we uh we have no knowledge of the judging and and things like that behind the scenes, which I honestly I'm I'm quite happy about because it just takes us completely out of these these things. And I I'm sure there were hard decisions in the back, and you know, honestly, I like I said, it's I think it's nice for us because we have like quite personal relationships with the athletes, all these things, and so when it comes down to these high pressure judging moments, is it's nice to be be removed from that. But yeah, unfortunately, there was some uh controversy on the end, and and that's what made it so exciting in the same way that everything came down to milliseconds or one placing, two placing for claiming those spots, and that's why it was uh an exciting competition. Like one placing either way would have made or lost the games ticket.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, the one the one a bit of noise I saw was around Callum and the sandbag event seemed to throw up. Uh, and I was gonna ask you about it and just see see what your thoughts on on that were.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, so I I only heard I actually didn't hear about any appeals. Okay, first thing as as an idea, and I think that CrossFit should do this, is actually make the appeals process transparent. So what happens in in the official way is that you know, take home. He puts an appeal in, and then that gets listed on game site or whatever. Callum appealed, whatever the appeal is, his full appeal gets written in there, crossfits or appeals decision, we've awarded this because of this. Because what happens is during a weekend like leaderboard will just jump around and people don't know why, what's happened, who's got what, and and I think actually the athletes would think more about the appeals that they they then do. And I I also think it's sensible that CrossFit like in tennis limit the number of appeals you can do than if it successfully gets rewarded back, whatever. But um I think having a transparent system. So the first I had about it was actually after uh just before the prize giving ceremony, Yoni came up as well, and and I think what happened is like he'd been awarded a sandbag clean for um doing more double unders. Uh, and that's you know that's how close it was, those three points, because the one sandbag clean put him in a higher position at the end of the weekend. That higher position was him beating Yoni. And the craziest thing about it all was everyone thought Yoni had gone through because, in theory, in the final heat he'd done enough to to make it to win. There were yeah, that but there was some random guy, and I remember watching the workout, we know why he's done really well. There's some random guy in the first heat, and like it all caught-I mean, there were a lot of athletes competing, like 48 athletes, so usually the first heat is significantly worse than the top heat, just because of that, there's just not the depth at that level, and even in elite competition, you wouldn't see that many. And so while most athletes were finishing in like six minutes or getting to the time cap, this guy came in in three minutes something, whatever it was. I was just like, wow. And it turns out that he just managed to uh get in between Yonny and Callum in the final. So if he'd have been a few seconds quicker and actually won the workout and beat Callum, he wouldn't have factored in. But just because he sandwiched himself in this random guy from the first, he he also ended up playing into this, playing into this dynamic. Yeah, so it was exciting. But yeah, you know, I f I I do feel for it's never nice situations, you know, in some ways not nice for Callum, in some ways um he he did get his game spot dive, so as uh winning in that, and then you know, I obviously feel sad for Yonny. He's he's like such a great actor. I've known him since he was like in 2014 when he first qualified to the game, so it's like 12 years on. And last year I think he missed I'm you know, I might need to double check this, but he was like one place out from qualifying in person in both, I think, and then went online and was like one place out from qualifying Yeah, I think you're right to be back. Hopefully now, same again. Yeah, so then now goes to Madrid and wants that's like four because I think that you know there was an unfortunate stat with Yonny as well, where he was the he was the first ever person to win quarterfinals, like win open, win quarterfinals, and then not go to the games. Um the other thing about yeah, so let's know. Obviously, like to see Yonny back at the games. I think this marks it would be like his tenth year as well.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. He's been around for for for a while now, and uh I know he's also had some injury problems as well. That right is when he was really on the rise in the games and stuff, kind of took him out for a few seasons. Um I was also, I mean, I was as you were talking that I was thinking about uh the judging and the appeals system that we don't really talk about all that much when it comes to the games. It is sort of like we know it happens, but we kind of apart from the odd bad judging call, it kind of doesn't really get spoken about that much from what I'm I can tell. And the one that sprung to mind was from the like 2017 games where Cara Webb and and Tia are having this epic race with the cat for the podium. And um, I can't remember exactly what workout is. I think there were might have been some thrusters and double unders or something. It was one of those workouts, and Kara, her judge basically is like, go, and she's I mean, she doesn't do like five of the end rep final reps or something, and there's a bit of a hoo-haw about it and stuff, but and they sort it out, and I think they judgment was pretty spot. Oh and the hard thing is because it's the unknown and unknowable, it's hard to really have standardized judging and and and policies for what happens when someone doesn't do the reps. But do you think that maybe as as you program the event that there needs to be some kind of judging organization that works with programmers to kind of come up with some of these things to build in some fail-safes, or or is that over-engineering it?
SPEAKER_01No, I I d I so I think that even needs to go beyond that. And I I completely agree that it's very hard to improve processes when they things constantly change. And I think standardizing certain things is really useful. One of the reasons that we wanted to put the seated dumbbell press in, ironically, there were some things around it that right. But it's like a really hard movement to uh to cheat around. And I do think at a certain point, like movement selection uh becomes very important in order to not have judging issues. It in this instance, in the the Callum one, it was like uh it wasn't about calling no reps or or whatever. It's like, okay, there's uh an appeal that he'd done too much work and then gets granted back because you can't give time in a workout like that. You have it's an AMRAP in essence. So you have to give a rep. Um do you have to give a rep. But it's so it's like all of these all of these things play out, and when a competition's so close, it becomes very unexpected. And and what do you do? And I I do think that I don't know if it's an independent body that should be in charge of judging and everything that goes through, but I think it would definitely help having clear standards, uh especially for movements that are consistent across competitions, like a bar facing burpee. What are the standards of a bar facing burpee? Can everyone agree on? And sometimes you look at the the minutiae like the two-foot takeoff thing, it's hard to judge. But at least if you can come to an accepted guideline or with the ring muscle up or snatch, etc. etc., you then have the standard protocol from the movements, and you still honestly I I've mentioned this before, but like in triathlon, even with triathlon, you could have so with three three skills in essence or three movement domains. You could have so much variance just within that sport. Like imagine you go to the triathlon race, all you know is that you're going to be running, swimming, and biking, but you don't know what order, you don't know the distances. But so there's a lot of variances with three things. So now with CrossFit, you know, there's over 200 movements that have been used in official competition. It's an infinite number of variants. Um, and I think there's no I don't I don't see the benefit of not standardizing the movements to make people's life easier because they're movements that we see come up so much.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I I agree. And it's hard because you after the fact, then some you know, people want to call certain other certain people out for being responsible. And I think you know, the the competition team obviously made a cool judgment call on Callum and uh and and wet how to how to kind of try and level the playing field on that workout. And yeah, some people are obviously going to think that it's not a great way of doing it.
SPEAKER_01Some people will be like, no, it seems sensible to me, and because there isn't there isn't more standardization in in the way that those calls are made, I think it is hard to and you could kind of be okay, so 15 and and it's very context specific because you can't go 15 double unders are the same as 15 rope climbs, obviously. So but you could maybe allocate, say, 15 double unbeaded rope double unders equate typically to this much time. And then you could go like, well, does this much time then equate to a classic sandbag clean across the average of what the so you could have these calculations for the workouts in place already? And should an appeal come in about doing too much work, like I think Fabi also had an appeal about like stopping on the ring muscleps or something like that, but at least there's some kind of pre-written formula that you could use. And obviously it would evolve, but it's a starting point to come through. And so on Brent uh Fikowski has through has done a tireless amount of work in order to do that. And also the IF3, they've also done a lot of work because they have to for the Olympic standards in order to think through and come through all of these all of these aspects.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. I think I I in slightly off topic, but when Brent retired, I was hoping that it was gonna be he was gonna get get into some of this more, and it's a bit not not that it's Brent's job to do so, but it's a bit of a shame that there isn't we don't seem to have that in the in the space at the moment, and anyone kind of carrying that torch and and doing that work. And I suppose it's a bit of a thankless task as well.
SPEAKER_01It's I don't think I don't think many people know just how much work Brent has put into that stuff. Like, I remember when I first spoke to me, I this is a number of years ago now, but he was like, I'll send you over some of the documents I put together. I was like, okay, cool. Oh my, like the documents that he sent through is just I mean, just hundreds of pages of of information, and that was kind of like at the start of his his documenting journey. And for every movement, every outcome, he'd really gone through and thought about all of these all of these things, and like there was just no there wasn't enough momentum to carry it through. And they kind of drew the line in the sand when they said about the the Castro thing after 24, and I think after that it got very hard for them to continue.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. That's a shame. That's a real shame. I mean, I got the sense that he put a lot of effort into it hearing him on podcast and stuff, but I didn't quite know the extent of the the documentation, and it's a shame that they I mean, when that people offer you free help to make to make what you do better, it's a shame when people when it's not taken up.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, it's it's tricky. Like the CrossFit sport team, so like CrossFit's divided into these three, you've got affiliation, education, and sport. And there's like 10 people or so, or roughly that number within sports that ultimately control the the sport. You would think, you know, one thing I also find crazy, there's no one international. Like in in CrossFit HQ, that is CrossFit, there's no one international, at least employed. There's no one international on on the sport team. And you would think why why would you not have a better representation of the sport in in the place that controls the sport? I think it's like a a really important thing to do, to have people, you know, you should have people from Latin America, people from Europe, people from uh Asia or wherever it may be, because they'll bring ideas that you know just through natural biases that people have, you won't think of because of the culture that that you've been raised in. It'll probably help grow the sports internationally, which you would think should be a clear goal.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Yeah. Well, I'm sure we'll touch on this again in future episodes. Is it we do we do talk about this kind of theme quite a lot, and hopefully there's there's going to be some positive change around this to come. But just before we run out of time, we'll have a quick look at the Syndicate Crown, uh, which is a really cool event. I thought the broadcast was was really good. I obviously watched it on the broadcast. Um, and it was um Mr. Andrew Hiller was putting out content as well, which said we got some behind the scenes from this event, which is the only the only sad thing from MAD that there wasn't really any media content creators in in Europe uh at the MAD Fitness Festival. So um the content was kind of the live stream and and that was it. There wasn't really any behind the scenes. But on the Syndicate Crown, Saxon Pancheck took took the win. Ty Jenkins and Austin Hatfield came in third. Uh Nate Ackerman, just missing out, um, was really was really tight in this comp as well. You kind of mentioned how tight the map mad was, but Syndicate also had yeah, just just quite a lot of top T Turby and anyone could win it moments as well. And on the women's side, Lydia Fish uh took the win. She kind of yeah, she she kind of led from the start, really. It felt like not quite a dominant performance, but but definitely felt like she was gonna win all weekend, and then Haley Adams coming in second, Daniel Brandon third, and then Janie Cheverey, who just missed out, who there was like I I think there's been quite a lot of media coverage of of Daniel Danielle's reaction to and the last event kind of making it because no one really knew what the final outcome was going to be. So yeah, again, some good good racing on the women's side, but but Lydia looked like she was in charge certainly through throughout the weekend.
SPEAKER_01Something to reflect on as well, that we mentioned about in a previous episode, is the consistent scoring system. So here in Syndicate as well, they didn't it was slightly weighted but not super weighted scoring system. And I do think that you know, as you as you see here, you get exciting races as well happening with with that. So it I think there's a reflection of the concept of the sport being consistency with within the the athletes. I do think that kind of non-weighted scoring system makes sense.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, although I was it was really interesting because I I completely agree. And but I was watching a couple of the old games documentaries just recently. I don't know why I kind of went back to them, and I was watching the one from 2020, the the COVID one, with with Matt Fraser and he and Or actually no, I think it was the one when he kind of caught Noah Rolson up. But he beat everyone by like a minute. And he was like, Great, I didn't get any extra points. I got like one po uh, whatever it was. It was a small margin of points next to the second place person, and he absolutely dominated them. And I was like, Ah, I wonder I wonder if you could weight it by the amount you won in a workout instead. So you get like an extra bonus point if you beat people more than a minute or more than a certain time domain or something if it's a full-time workout, rather than having a winning points weight. It kind of made me think about that. Because you don't get rewarded at all for how much you win in CrossFit. Um really, just that you win.
SPEAKER_01Have you heard of the Z scoring system?
SPEAKER_00No, I don't think so.
SPEAKER_01So there was there was a little while, I think it was the guys from Barbell Spin, or some of the guys behind it, and they were really pushing this scoring system that did exactly that. So you'd be rewarded for the basically the how you did relative to the field. So let's say you finish first by a long way, you would get that reward because the average of the field is worse. And in the same way, if you only beat someone by 0.5 of a second, even though points-wise that becomes significant, it would then still be calculated relative to the field. So actually the points that you get would not be that much more. And again, it does it obviously changes leaderboards, but not as much as you would think. It doesn't like isn't crazy. I also I like that system because it rewards the work and also demonstrates how close competitions can be. It's just a bit complex to follow because you know, for a general population like this person gets one point, this person gets two points. Person with the least points wins, you're okay. But then trying, you know, it's complicated enough as it is. And so I think from uh pure people who are like deep in the sport, it makes sense, but it might be a bit too complex.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I get that. I mean that's what I was thinking. Maybe even just like a bo, you know, like in rugby, they have a bonus point system if you get over a certain amount of tries. So maybe it's like if you beat someone by a certain amount, it's just a bonus point on the workout, and that way you at least you rewards people for going harder. Um, but it's not too complicated. But I I mean, you know, I I like the sound of the Zoring system. I hope someone tries it one day just so we can see how it works.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, they they've put the they've put it against different scores, but this is where the Xenom will be interesting as well, because they've like ranked each of their workouts, like the this new method, and I wonder if that how that all that'd be really hard to do at each CrossFit competition because you'd then have to go through each workout and calculate what a perfect score is, and you'd have to get it very accurate because if one workout is then too biased, it then messes up the whole scoring system. So that's why it'd be interesting to see how Zenon plays out. Like your conditioning stuff, for example, you might have scored it wrong, so you're not able to get enough points, and therefore an athlete comes in who's really strong and you haven't weighted the score scoring in the same way, that means that the the strength athlete might all of a sudden just completely destroy anyone who's good at conditioning because of the way the scoring's weighted. So it might create all these really weird scenarios of types of athletes.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, absolutely. Absolutely. I mean, and back to your earlier point, because we've changed scoring system and season system and all sorts of systems and CrossFit so much over the last decades, I think it's it's hard to see any evolution and it's it is become a bit hard to follow. So hopefully, I mean, if this is the system, we just stick with it and try and iterate it and make it better. But hopefully it it does evolve and and into some scoring stuff. But like you said, but going back to Syndicate Crown, that it was exciting and Mad both both had really exciting races. Um, and it was kind of fun to see for the last weekend, just some some cool races and some drama. Um uh but it did raise the question again back to last chance qualifier and having seven athletes from both. And why was that not spread against the semifinals? I think that's a big question that I see not just us talk about, but pretty much everyone in the media space talking about.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, because uh no one likes online. So I I think that you know just put everyone like it's been a lot more rewarding, even for the athletes, spectators, media, you know, create a lot easier to create stories. This is the last chance, it's like yeah. Well, I personally think that all all of the online should should go anywhere. I mean the biggest hype of the season is about the open, but it's not because it's an online competition, it's because it's celebrated in the box, it's like an in-person thing. Whereas most box owners don't want people doing the the semi-finals stuff because it's a crazy amount of work, they have to shut things down if the athlete's serious, etc. Yeah, for sure.
SPEAKER_00Any surprises out of the syndicate from your side?
SPEAKER_01I I you know it's very impressive to see Lydia Fish uh come through so well. It's also relatively dominant performance.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I think she's definitely uh someone on the rise. So she seems to be growing in confidence and growing every time I see her in competition. So so yeah, and on the men's side, I think uh you got someone Ty Jenkins as well seems to be someone who's growing into the sport. He's he had a couple of big of big events, it was cool to see him go, and and Nate, poor Nate Ackerman literally fell on a handstand walk. I think it was the final event or the one before the final event, which opened the door to Austin Hatfield, so he was pretty devastated at the end. You could see some young guys coming up in the space now.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, that's it'd be exciting to see, and I you know, I think Colton's it's just um programming dependent, like he can smash a competition and not be touchable, then also struggle to qualify. And I think it's just a bit of the nature of the biases. Yeah, absolutely.
SPEAKER_00Well, team, this has been a sorry John.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I'm just gonna have to have to roll.
SPEAKER_00Yes, exactly. So sorry for the short, sharp one this week, team. Um we'll be back next week where we'll cover the online last chance qualifier and have a bit more of a chat from this weekend's coverage. But that's it for us this week. Thank you very much, John, as ever. It's great to speak to you. Thank you guys. Um, we'll catch you on the next one, team.