Four Standout Athletes on Day Two

Photo Credits: Athlete’s Eye

This is the third consecutive year the Rogue Invitational has had at least nine scored events, and exactly three of them happened on Day 2 of competition in each of those years. In each of the last two years there were four athletes who managed all single digit (ninth or better) finishes on Day 2. 

In 2022 the four athletes who accomplished this were all women: 

• Laura Horvath: 1st, 1st, 2nd
• Annie Thorisdottir: 2nd, 7th, 7th
• Ellie Turner: 8th, 4th, 3rd
• Alexis Raptis: 6th, 5th, 5th

Their respective finishes at the end of the competition that year were 1st, 2nd, 4th, and 8th. 

In 2023 it was an even split between the men and the women:

• Pat Vellner: 4th, 3rd, 3rd
• Travis Mayer: 9th, 4th, 6th
• Manon Angonese: 4th, 8th, 6th
• Christine Kolenbrander: 6th, 7th, 7th

Pat and Travis would go on to finish 1st and 6th overall that year, while Manon and Christine would wind up 10th and 11th come end of day Sunday. 

This year, there were a total of six athletes who managed the feat. Two of them were the overall leaders to start the day:

• Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr: 1st, 2nd, 8th
• Jeff Adler: 3rd, 2nd, 9th

While Tia and Jeff would retain the overall leads on the back of another impressive day, the other four athletes who managed to achieve a trio of single digit finishes today make big jumps up the leaderboard:

Brent Fikowski

Beginning the day in eighth overall, Brent would open with a sixth on the long row, thruster, log muscle up event. He was the sixth and final athlete on the men’s side who actually managed to beat the aggressive time cap, while that was a great finish, it may irk him to have finished only .32 seconds behind Jonne Koski. On the middle event of the day he finished fourth, another strong finish, but perhaps another slightly annoying one as it was a five-horse race is in his heat for the overall win, and he wound up fourth out of those five men. And finally, the “Duel IV”, where Fikowski once again showed an incredible display of both power and athleticism fighting through four rounds of the elimination event to earn a spot in the final for the second time in two attempts at a Rogue Duel event. Just like last year, it was by tenths of seconds that he lost to a young and strong opponent; last year it was Hopper, this year it was Gui Malheiros. 

Overall Fikowski’s strong day moved him from eighth to fourth. He’s only ten points behind Dallin Pepper for the final podium position with one day to go.

Laura Horvath

Horvath is the only name who has now achieved this feat in two of the three years being evaluated in this study, and incredibly for the second time she earned 295 of the possible 300 second day points available. In order her event finishes were 2nd, 1st, 1st today. She’s moved from 2nd to 1st in her pursuit of the title defense. Through six events only her and Toomey have earned event wins on the women’s side of things. 

Emma Tall

After a strong start on Day 1 in event 1 with an eighth place, she reeled off back-to-back 15th place finishes leaving fans of hers a bit underwhelmed. It certainly didn’t seem to phase the veteran from Sweden though, as she came back in a strong way on Saturday. Battling from the first heat today, she appeared to take second in her heat and sixth over all on event 4, however due to a tiebreak rule that only the athletes knew about about she wound up third in her heat and seventh overall when she came half a step short of getting her chip timer across the finish line before the cap hit. Less than a third of the field on both the men’s and women’s side finished under the cap and many were asking why it wasn’t a minute longer- if it had been, Tall would have gotten the five extra points that she originally appeared to have had. 

Another tight time cap on event 5 led to an opening heat with no finishers, however, this time Tall left no doubt and accumulated more reps than the other nine women in heat one. This time only two women would beat the cap, and only three women would beat Tall as she continued to notch her best Rogue performances of her career (she’s a rookie this year after all). 

Make it three-for-three in terms of personal bests, as she essentially mirrored Fikowski’s performance, grinding through the heats, making up ground every round against her opponents on the sled, and ultimately coming up short of the victory by a small margin to a past Rogue Duel champion (Gui won in his only other attempts in 2021, Laura won the Duel II in 2022 and has been second the other two years).

When the sun set on Sunday, Tall had made the biggest leap forward of the day going from a concerning 16th to an impressive 4th*.

*And with Gabi Migala being one of the three athletes ahead of her and sadly suffering an injury in the final event today, Tall is suddenly a serious podium threat as a rookie. 

Alex Gazan

The final athlete who met the day two criteria is Gazan. She began the day in 12th, and therefore was battling against Tall all day in the opening heat. Having each other to go against was probably a bonus for both women. Gazan was the only athlete in her heat to finish the rowing, thruster, log muscle up chipper, which would be good enough for a fourth place finish to start the day. 

She’d follow that up by finishing second to Tall in heat one of event five, which would hold up as a seventh place finish for the event. 

Gazan, who was a rookie last year and placed fourth in the “Duel III”, would have another strong Duel finish placing sixth to round out a day of competition that saw her earn 230 points on the day, a full 100 points more than she earned on day one. With 360 total points she is now sixth (and tied on points with Arielle Loewen) as we enter the final day of competition. 

After two days of competition there are now only two athletes of the original 40 who started the competition remaining who can add their names to the previous seven athletes who have managed all single digit finishes in a single year at Rogue. Those two are also the overall leaders of the competition at this point: Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr (who accounts for two of the previous seven occurrences) and Jeff Adler, who is attempting to not only become the seventh unique person to do that, but is also fighting to become only the sixth unique Rogue champion. If he is able to do so he would join Toomey-Orr, Horvath, Mat Fraser, Vellner, and Justin Medeiros in that exclusive club.