It is one of many highlights of the Rogue Invitational. Might it return in 2024?
Final up to date on November seventh, 2024
There has arguably been no occasion extra vital to the end result of the Rogue Invitational within the final three years than “The Duel” sequence.
What Is “The Duel”?
The Duel is a match bracket occasion the place athletes advance by way of rounds.
- The format is straightforward and thrilling — if the athlete just isn’t quick sufficient to make the reduce, they get eradicated.
The Duel concludes with the 2 quickest athletes in a head-to-head matchup for all of the glory.
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We’ve got seen three iterations of The Duel, all of which included a sandbag:
2021: The Duel
- 60 heavy rope double-unders
- 3 squat snatches (Men 205/ Women 145 kilos)
- Sandbag (250/185 kilos) to platform
- 1 legless rope climb
- 10 overhead squats (135/95 kilos)
- sandbag carry (200/150 kilos)
- Log over-under-over
- Discipline dash
- 3 sandbags to teeter
Enjoyable truth: No male or feminine champion within the final three years has positioned decrease than third in The Duel.
- 2021 Rogue Champions – Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr (first in “The Duel”), Justin Medeiros (third in “The Duel”)
- 2022 Rogue Champions – Laura Horvath (first in “The Duel II”), Justin Medeiros (first in “The Duel II”)
- 2023 Rogue Champions – Laura Horvath (second in “The Duel III”), Pat Vellner (third in “The Duel III”)
Leaderboard Implications
“The Duel” – 2021
Aside from 2021, the Duel occasion has shaken up the leaderboard.
The primary iteration confirmed up as occasion seven of seven. After the final thrilling occasion of the weekend, the rostrum remained unchanged as the highest three women and men took care of enterprise.
“The Duel II” – 2022
“The Duel II” confirmed up in the course of the competitors as occasion six of 10.
Roman Khrennikov held a 10-point lead over Justin Medeiros for first place going into the occasion.
- Medeiros turned the 10-point deficit right into a 60-point lead over Khrennikov, who took fifteenth within the occasion.
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The 2 had been separated by 14 locations and solely 9 seconds. Medeiros dove throughout the end line with the 200-pound sandbag, sacrificing his physique to take the win over Jorge Fernandez.
- “I knew this was one other high-execution occasion…I simply needed to roll the cube and go for it on that final one,” Medeiros stated in his post-event interview.
On the ladies’s facet, Laura Horvath had gained three straight occasions going into occasion six and beat Danielle Brandon within the closing spherical to extend her lead on Gabi Migała from 5 factors to 60.
“The Duel III” – 2023
Contemplating Horvath gained the complete competitors by a margin of solely 10 factors, the 50 factors she gained on Tia Clair Toomey-Orr in “The Duel III” turned out to be consequential.
- Toomey-Orr was knocked out within the second spherical, good for twelfth place.
In the meantime, Horvath moved on to face Dani Speegle within the finale. The latter gained the occasion by eight-hundredths of a second.
- Horvath’s second place to Toomey-Orr’s twelfth was separated by a mere 5.6 seconds.
The largest beneficiaries on the boys’s facet had been Jayson Hopper and Brent Fikowski, who confronted off within the closing spherical.
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Hopper took the win, leaping him from 14th to ninth place. Fikowski additionally catapulted up the leaderboard, transferring from seventh all the way in which to second.
- “My instances bought somewhat quicker every spherical. However they had been all the time somewhat slower than Hopper’s,” Fikowski joked in his post-event interview.
The Backside Line
“The Duel” has been one of the crucial entertaining occasions over the past three years on the Rogue Invitational, rewarding athleticism and precision.
- The identify was actually a nod to “basic Texas avenue justice,” as Chase Ingraham put it.
So, we might have seen the tip of the sequence with Rogue transferring out of Texas this yr.
Nonetheless, may we see a Scottish model of the high-stakes tournament-style occasion? Probably with a caber toss or a weight over a bar? One can solely hope.
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Featured picture: Enrique Villaseñor