Rogue 2024, Men’s Events 1 and 2: Small Margins Yield Big Points

Photo Credits: Athlete’s Eye

The first day of competition began with one long and one relatively short event:

• A long running and sandbag moving event with a 25:00 cap
• A “sprint” chipper consisting of an echo bike, ring muscle ups, squat snatches, and shuttle runs with an 8:00 cap

Although the time caps were different, the margins for error, for the men in particular, ended up being incredibly small, and costly for some. 

In event 1 for the men:

• Jeff Adler and Ricky Garard beat the next closest man (Jayson Hopper) by nearly 70 seconds. 
• However, the amount of time from Hopper in 3rd, to Samuel Kwant in 17th, was only 68 seconds. Even more wild than that is that from Brent Fikowski in 5th, to Jay Crouch in 11th, was only 9 seconds. 
• With 5 points per place available, that meant that over a 20 minute workout, 9 seconds was representative of 30 percent of the points available (or 30 total points difference between Fikowski and Crouch). 

This becomes especially interesting when compared with the men’s results on event 2:

• Again we had two men separate from the rest, this time it was Dallin Pepper and Gui Malheiros who were 15 seconds clear of the field (relative to the time cap that’s the equivalent of a :45 second spread on event 1)
• The next four finishes, Fikowski, Hopper, Adler, and Garard were separated by another 15 second gap
• A little lower on the leaderboard Giorgos Karavis finished 11th, 15 seconds slower than him would end up costing Bjorgvin Karl Gudmundsson 5 spots, or 25 points. 

Why does this matter so much? 

Last year on the men’s final leaderboard, places 5th through 10th were separated by a total of 35 points. When you think about that 9 seconds over 20 minutes can cost an athlete 30 points, and 15 seconds out of 6 minutes can cost another 25, it illuminates just how critical execution under pressure ends up being for the athletes in this field.

The biggest winners:

• Fikowski was at the front pack of a group of 5 men separated by 5 seconds (25 points) in event 1 
• Sam Cournoyer was second among that same group, netting 20 points that he would have sacrificed if he was 4 seconds slower. He also was at the front of a group of 4 men who finished less than 5 seconds apart in event 2, meaning he gained a total of 40 points by a combined total of 9 seconds over the first two events of the weekend.

Looking Forward to the Remaining Events

Be on the lookout for the athletes throughout the rest of the competition who are making the least mistakes, and finishing consistently at the top of these tightly packed races in every event.