You could say it’s like Mr. Hyde and Dr. Jekyll, Superman and Clark Kent, Spiderman and Peter Parker. Call it an alter ego or a nickname. Either way, it reveals another dimension to CrossFit Games competitors’ athletic feats.
Travis Mayer and Trevor
Going into the sixth and final event of this year’s Atlantic Regional, Travis Mayer was more than 20 points outside one of the five qualifying spots for the Games.
That’s when the 26-year-old channeled Trevor, his alter ego.
Trevor emerges “when my back’s against the wall,” said Mayer, who sits in 20th place overall at the start of Day 2. Last year, Mayer ended his third Games in 10th place overall.
The whole thing started two years ago when Mayer’s coach, Max El-Hag, told him he wasn’t mean enough.
“Travis’ training potential has always been way better than his competition potential,” El-Hag explained.
The coach also warned Mayer that only his alter ego was permitted to train.
“I told him that Trevor is the only person that I like,” El-Hag said with a wide smile.
Mayer conceded that his coach’s description is an apt one.
“It’s accurate,” he said, smiling.
Mayer added of Trevor: “The goal right now is to keep him out the whole weekend.”
Brent Fikowski and The Professor
Back when Brent Fikowski, now 26, was studying accounting at Griffith University in Australia, he began training CrossFit.
“Right away, as soon as I started CrossFit, I began analyzing workouts,” explained Fikowski, who was in fifth place overall after three events.
He never stopped.
To this day, the Canadian picks apart movements, strategizes how to divide sets of reps and ponders the most efficient way to make use of his 6-foot-2, 215-lb. frame.
When he became competitive, the skill became even more useful. Fikowski has competed in five Regionals; this is his second Games. Last year, he finished fourth overall as a rookie, just 2 points behind third-place finisher Patrick Vellner, a fellow Canadian.
“When you get here, you try to work smarter,” Fikowski said after Thursday night’s Amanda .45 event inside the Veterans Memorial Coliseum at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison, Wisconsin.
He prides himself on pouring over the details.
“If anything, I overthink things all the time. I try to live as I compete and compete as I live—with dedication and focus.”
Unlike Mayer, however, Fikowski was clear that The Professor is not his alter ego.
With a smile, he said, “It’s who I am all the time.”
Kara Webb and She-Bear
She-Bear, Big Dub and Slinger.
Kara Webb blames her three nicknames on the company she keeps.
“I think it’s because I hang around boys too much,” she explained.
She-Bear, however, has been memorialized in a “Road to the Games” episode CrossFit Inc. published last year.
The way the story goes is that whenever Webb gets grumpy and tired, the men are quick to call her She-Bear, a reference from an episode of “The Simpsons” in which an old man who lives in the woods talks about the fact that he married a bear. His wife, a human, responds with, “I told you, I ain’t a bear.”
The old man quips, “Rawr, rawr, rawr, no one understands you, She-Bear.”
And that’s the exact sentence the men in Kara Webb’s gym quote when she stomps on a barbell, for example.
The nickname is most definitely not an alter ego, she said after finishing sixth in Amanda .45 on Day 1. All the nicknames, for that matter, are unwelcome.
“I hate them,” she said. “And the more I hate them, the more they say them.”
