Board Games

July 21, 2015

MIke Warkentin with Andréa Maria Cecil and Megan Mitchell

A 2013 teaser and a 2010 throwback will open the individual competition in 2015.

A 2013 teaser and a 2010 throwback will open the individual competition in 2015.
 

“What’s past is prologue.” —William Shakespeare, “The Tempest”

With Jenga sets on the tables as a clue or a red herring, CrossFit Games Director Dave Castro unleashed a tempest of his own on individual CrossFit Games athletes at a dinner at Il Fornaio Manhattan Beach.

In a 2014 teaser video, Castro recommended athletes look at past events to see where the Games might be going in the future, and tonight he checked to see who took his advice. 

Actually, he checked twice.

Back to the Future

At the athletes’ dinner in 2013, Castro hinted at an event in the water before having CrossFit Games staff member Tim Chan walk in with a stand-up paddleboard and paddle

"Sorry, that's 2014's surprise," Castro said before shooing Chan out and announcing a couplet of swimming and bar muscle-ups.

A year late, the paddleboard—but not the paddle—will be part of the CrossFit Games. The event: Pier Paddle.

Starting at 7 a.m. on July 22, the individual athletes will run from the beach into the water to swim 500 m around Hermosa Beach Pier. When they get out of the water, they’ll grab fiberglass paddleboards and stroke a mile south along the beach before returning. Once they hit the beach, they’ll swim another 500 m around the pier before running to the finish line.

The exact details of the event are subject to change according to surf conditions on the day of the event.

“If there’s big surf, you guys are fucked,” Castro said.

Castro wasn’t done with the flashbacks.

Also on the agenda for Wednesday is a huskier version of the signature 2010 Games event Sandbag Move. One of the first events to really take advantage of the architecture of the Home Depot Center (now StubHub), Sandbag Move was a loose callback to the vicious Sandbag Sprint of the 2009 Games in Aromas.

In 2015, athletes will once again be moving sandbags down the stairs of the stands, across the floor with a wheelbarrow and back up the stands. In 2010, the men moved 600 lb. and the women moved 370, and while Castro didn’t release the loads for 2015, he promised more weight.

The wheelbarrow—prone to breakage in 2010—has been bulked up significantly in 2015, courtesy of Rogue Fitness. Far from the rickety hardware-store models of 2010, the Rogue wheelbarrow is a hefty all-metal jet-black number Castro guaranteed would be up to the task.

Bombproof as the wheelbarrow might be, athletes will still have to worry about tipping it. They might want to take notes from 2010 event winner Tommy Hackenbruck, who penned “Tommy Hack’s Tips for Successful Wheelbarrowing” after several of his rivals awkwardly spilled sandbags and lost time in 2010.

Before the announcements, athletes were hesitant to guess what Castro had in store.

Two-time CrossFit Games champion Annie Thorisdottir was hoping for a heavy sled push but didn’t want to jinx it.

"It seems like if I say something, it won't be that," the Icelander said.

Rebecca Voigt—the only individual to joust with Castro for eight consecutive CrossFit Games—was certain of exactly one thing: "I know Dave Castro will have that charming yet devious smile.”

Once Castro was finished, he left the athletes to chew on the workouts and their dinner.

Phil Hesketh, a Games rookie who wasn’t even doing CrossFit in 2010, said he had actually watched the 2010 Sandbag Move event several times.

“You can’t replicate that in the gym,” he said.

Spencer Hendel, on the other hand, finished sixth in Sandbag Move and was looking forward to a repeat performance.

“It was a good event back then and will be a good event this year,” said Hendel, who recalled the by-any-means-necessary approaches that had larger athletes heaving sandbags over the walls and shorter ones stacking bags and standing on them while straining to push the bags over the barrier.

Hendel noted he has long arms and big hands, which he hopes will be an asset on the paddleboard.

“Hopefully I’ll be able to get that thing moving.”

He recently practiced swimming at Hermosa with fellow competitor Austin Malleolo, but he’s still not a huge fan of the water.

Swimming in the ocean isn’t my favorite thing. It freaks me out a little bit,” he said.

His distaste for the water is shared by rookie Joe Scali.

"I'm nervous about being in the water. ... My fear of sharks is real," the Canadian said. He said countless friends tagged him on Facebook on the video of the shark attacking professional surfer Mick Fanning.

"I've done paddleboarding before ... but not on my knees or like that," said Scali, who suggested he might rent a paddleboard tomorrow to get some practice.

The sandbag event, however, is right up his alley.

"I worked construction for about 10 years. ... I know what it feels like working with an unbalanced load. Working construction all those years paid off," he said.

For complete details, visit the Games events page

All individual events will be streamed to ESPN3 for U.S. viewers and onto YouTube for everyone else. A General Admission wristband will give fans access to the Sandbag 2015 event Wednesday afternoon in the Tennis Stadium. GA wristbands are on sale online and at the StubHub Center box office.