Obstacle course was the endurance sports juggernaut of the last decade. With COVID-19 that came to a bruise. After a lost year, the obstacle race is recovering.
"Last year couldn't have been worse for us," said Joe De Sena, CEO and founder of Spartan, the largest OCR company in an industry of weekend warrior brands like Tough Mudder, Rugged Maniac, Savage Race, Bonefrog and Conquer the cuff. “We bring people together - now in 45 countries. In 2020 we were suddenly no longer allowed to do that. We were totally shut down. "
Last June, De Sena was forced to cancel Spartan's remaining events and keep three-quarters of its 500 employees busy. Smaller companies were in even tougher shape.
Competitor in the Spartan Race Courtesy Image
"COVID-19 is crushing the industry," said Kyle McLaughlin, CEO of Tough Mudder, in an Endurance Sports Coalition press release last summer that warned that without further support from Congress, more than 80 percent of an industry could hit the 50,000 running, triathlon, cycling, and obstacle course events in the US would cease to exist every year.
OCR evolved from bootcamp-inspired races that tested physical limits without marathon monotony and Tough Guy pain festivals from the 1980s in England. Spartan's earliest races were fringe events at De Sena Vermont farm, but grew rapidly to include hundreds of 3-mile entry-level and full-day events at major outdoor venues around the world.
The biggest challenge for OCR is to get back into the fray in 2021 - hindsight in 2020.
"We know it's safer than anything inside like grocery shopping."
"I think the numbers will be going down on purpose for a while, and slowly but surely, when the world goes back to normal, the OCR industry will steadily recover," said Matt B. Davis, founder of Obstacle Racing Media and a die-hard racing driver with more than 200 obstacle course events. "We're not going to see those mass starts of 300 people. Wave sizes will be smaller and socially distant. But it's an outdoor event that we know is far safer than anything indoors, like grocery shopping. We know that people are ready to start real races again - not the virtual ones we went through in 2020. "
Playing dirty: After a dark season, OCR athletes competing alone and as teams want a do-over. Courtesy Image
More than 70 Spartan and Tough Mudder events are planned for 2021 - including the iconic 24-hour Toughest Mudder in the world (vember 13-14, Laughlin, NV) and several Stadion-branded events in Nationals Park in Washington. DC, Citi Field in New York City, AT&T Stadium in Arlington, TX, and tre Dame Stadium in Indiana, among others.
Rugged Maniac, which calls its 3-mile obstacle course an "adult break unless our playground has a three-story water slide and fire jump," is back with a list of 30 events in the US and Canada in 2021. Savage Race, specializing in 6-mile races and a 3-mile lightning bolt filled with some of the business's most inventive obstacles, is back with more than a dozen events across the East Coast and the Midwest. Known as "the only Navy SEAL Obstacle Course Race in the world", Bonefrog plans to run 10 events this year.
Contestants can expect new logs including temperature tests, reduced crowd (by up to 70 percent), dedicated lanes, cleanup by touchpoints, and few parties after the race.
"I'm the eternal optimist, but I believe that when the world opens up, people will finally get out of the cage at events like ours," says De Sena. "They'll wander out into the open, get dirty and do all the things they couldn't. So let's do it. We have to do it."
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