The Lion's Ovation
Tuesday, July 28, 2009 at 12:00PM by Jon Gilson
There is no wooden platform. Only rolled rubber, stretched over a concrete pad and coated with the thin, obnoxious dust of the Aromas desert.
Luminaries with red and white lights are replaced by blue-clad Judges, some qualified, some not, all with hands held high.
The contenders eschew the singlet fashion of the sport; their wooden-soled shoes the only vestige of traditional Olympic weightlifting garb.
Dead silence is a joke, drowned out by a fierce, screaming crowd and the hate music rocketing from the speakers.
The California sun slow cooks the barbells, each resting against a log marked with a number that has no bearing on the task at hand.
Ten minutes. A stack of plates. Power snatch or squat snatch, split or not. Rip it up smoothly, press it out ugly, it doesn’t matter. Just get it over your head. Max load wins.
“Go!” slams out of the P.A., and the barbells flash. There are beautiful lifts, and ugly lifts, competitors digging, catching loads that should succumb to gravity, standing to the lion’s ovation, the roar of myriad spectators who know the feeling but not the arena.
They sense revolution. There is no polite clapping. This is gladiatorial fervor, surging crowd thumbs down, kill it now.
There is no need to visit the scorers’ table. The athletes witness the competition in real time, those who would have them slashed from the Games with superior lifts pooling sweat at their feet and crying triumph with each successful lift.
This is not a USA Weightlifting event. It is the future. Hundreds of eyes fixed on a stadium littered with lifters, not one paying attention to protocol or deferentially waiting their turn to lift, none worried if they’ll follow themselves on the next lift—it’s guaranteed that they will.
There are no games to play, no strategy, no energy saved for lifts two and three. They lift until they fail, and then they lift again.
The traditional throng, baited breath in a fluorescent-washed gymnasium, is replaced with the vanguard of training, hundreds of valkyries sucking dirt and spitting fire, CrossFitters who recognize that work done is work done. They know that fitness is not measured in an instant but a series of instants, an endless thread of pain and resolve, held together with the glue of pride and the threat of failure.
It isn’t just spectator friendly. It’s an orgy of entertainment, created by a single rule: Stand It Up. Dumped barbells carom back toward the lifters, thrown unto the duplicitous curbs at their feet, giving a feeling of impending catastrophe and snap-focusing the risk of athletic pursuit.
There are those who would witness such a spectacle and bellow foul. This, they would say, is not weightlifting. This is an abomination.
They would be right, and for every wrong reason. We are no longer playing the same game, and just as you cannot call out baseball for cricket or black for white, you cannot call this a mangled weightlifting meet.
Instead, it is an evolution, a different creature, borne of the need to adapt. Until now, weightlifting was dying, its punctured lungs aspirating and collapsing. With a single hour on a sunburned farm, it now stands ready, the province of Red Bull sponsorships and worshipful ten-year olds, where the best aren’t strong once an hour, but a dozen times in ten minutes, their fitness defined not in one sphere but in many.
There will be a fight, but it will not last long. First, the purists will laugh at the rules and the form, declaring that we couldn’t possibly succeed with such a preposterous format. As the loads increase, they’ll start with the ‘dangerous’, and as the crowds swell to fill the Rose Bowl, they’ll seek sanction and injunction.
In the end, the resistance won’t matter, because superiority survives on its own merit, because this is the future, wood and spandex be damned.
Lindsey Smith fights while Kurtis Bowler looks on in horror. Picture courtesy of CrossFit.com.
Reader Comments (30)
Jon,
Perfect, accurate, beautiful. My nominee for this year's best sports essay. Thank you.
Thats it: The Future. I can taste it.
wow... sounds barbaric. I wanna be there!
i really wish i made the trip to watch see the games in person...i'll just have to make sure i'm there for next year!
As usual, awesome writing Jon. I'm not sure I agree on this type of event replacing traditional weightlifting competitions. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed following the CF games from home, and I agree that in North America, CF has popularized weightlifting to people who had no idea the sport even exisited before. I just don't think it's possible to lift truly maximal loads (at the limit of human potential) under those conditions. People will always be interested in knowing what the greatest weight is that can be snatched/clean+jerked overhead. There is room for both competitions and I hope they both continue to grow.
Grambo,
Thanks for writing. I don't think this will replace traditional OWL, given that it's an Olympic sport (and a great one at that), but this type of event will do more to stimulate CrossFit interest in competitive weightlifting than any USAW regional meet ever could. Your take is dead on, but damn, isn't this sh*t exciting?
Best,
Jon
Love it, Jon!!
Thank you for your awesome post, as a spectator at the games, I could not have said it any better. I appreciate your website and you and your fellow writers insights.
Keep it up.
-Alec
Crossfit 360
In a way, it's kinda like what parkour has done to running - taken something that's boring as all heck and transmogrified it into a sport that's got balls.
The good news is that the Games is much easier to watch, and CrossFit more readily adaptable to everyone and anyone who wants to jump in and try their hand at it.
Sport of the future? Yeah. And the future is here now.
another great GREAT post. thanks jon
Always a joy to read your posts Jon...if I was only half as eloquent with my words as you are. thank god for youtube and copy and paste for me to get my point across. This stuff is exciting and one can only imagine what it will be like next year or the year after that! we are in the infant stage of the games which makes it even more thrilling to be apart of. hope all is well with the you and the family Jon
Today was my rest day.... but I brought workout clothes just in case. However, I had accepted it as "necessary" (forget that I will be off for three days) and prudent. BUT THAT CAME CRASHING DOWN as I read what I believe in thru these words, now it's time to go don the workout attire and CRUSH IT!
Thanks Jon, another home run brother!
That is my beautiful wife! Do you know what she is better at than CrossFit? Motherhood, friendship, dedication to her company (Fluor Corp.) and her devotion to Jesus Christ. She is an all around amazing person and I am privileged to have her as the force pushing me to greatness in all areas of my life (but hopefully, the CF Games 2010 ;)).
Love you,
Web
http://www.wearecrossfit.blogspot.com
Web,
Lindsey is amazing. My best to both of you. Keep crushing it in Houston!
Best,
Jon
Thank you both, Webster and Jon, for your kind comments.
Clearly it would have been to my advantage to check out your "fixing the snatch" video on vimeo prior to the Games! Trust me, I have watched it multiple times since. It's a lift I am eager to improve upon. Great article, Jon! Very well written.
After I busted my eye (in this pic), I fortunately did get 130# overhead. Albeit, very ugly, I'm sure.
See you around! = )
That was a ok article. I think you are forgetting though that a mediocre female olympic lifter can snatch more than Jeff Leonard's 240lbs. So let's not carried away on the amount of strength that was demonstrated. a 14 year old chinese girl on youtube snatches 70KG which is more than some of the male competitors and all of the women.
Wow, thank you for the wonderful article...I haven't read anything that eloquent in a very long time. You captured the feeling during that event like no other. Thank you for sharing this!!
Reading it gave me chillbumps!!!!!!!! Awesome
Beijing Women's 75+ Results:
Gold Jang Miran, South Korea 326, Olympic Record, World Record
Silver Olha Korobka, Ukraine 277
Bronze Mariya Grabovetskaya, Kazakhstan 270
4 Ele Opeloge, Samoa 269
5 Mariam Usman, Nigeria 265
6 Cheryl Haworth, United States of America 259
7 Yuliya Dovhal, Ukraine 258
8 Deborah Lovely, Australia 248
9 Victoria Mavridou, Greece 231
10 Cristina Cornejo Scheelje, Peru 225
Best,
Jon
Jon,
First just wanted to say thanks for the work you put into my cert (Milton, FL) It was a great experience.
Secondly, what an incredible post. You're not only a badass instructor, you're a word ninja as well! I recently found this page and I'm always coming back to it and finding motivation or useful information. I'm sure you don't need other peoples validation of your work to create a sense of accomplishment for yourself but you write some awesome stuff. Thanks!
Peyton