Episode 347 with Josh Rosenthal:

Josh joins me on Singletrack to talk about the future of trail race reporting and the fascination of livestreams. He’s built a prototype (Live on Trail) that mimics a massive dashboard displaying various ‘on course’ information streams with the hope of making the on-screen talents more knowledgeable and the viewing experience more enjoyable. What I love about this effort – vibe-coded and all – is that it goes beyond “hey I have an opinion” and actually “throwing something against the wall”. Let’s see if it sticks.

Links

• Josh’s articles on Borderlands
• Borderland’s ‘Live on Course‘ app
• Trailmix on Live on Trail

This one dropped earlier week via press announcement (English and French version) and is a good read and worth some notes. Of course – like with every CSR report – one can find niggles. One can question the metrics or the focus of it. I do think it’s a worthwhile effort for the largest trail organization to share some of their metrics and priorities.

One thing to bear in mind is that this report is not for the UTMB World Series – it doesn’t consider all their events across the Globe. This CSR report is just for UTMB Mont-Blanc – the Finals and their flagship product. This is an important distinction. As UTMB expands it becomes more and more known as “the World Series”. UTMB owns and operates (in some fashion or other) 60+ events. It seems a bit disingenuous when a company shows off just one product in their portfolio for a report like this. Kind of like if a global corporation praises how energy efficient their headquarters are without mentioning the realities of their supply chain. Or phrased differently, UTMB generates revenue in 66 locations across the globe, they should highlight and put into context these efforts across their entire portfolio of events. This is my one niggle, and as I said above it’s easy to find one with these reports.

But, this aside, let’s look at some of their numbers and efforts organizing this massive event around Mont-Blanc each year and how it affects the communities and our larger trail community.

From the introduction to their report (page 5):

Defend the connection to nature. Preserve the human and local dimension. Leave no one behind. Foster diversity, inclusion and the bonds between people.

What trail race organization has a mission statement? And one that is considered and elevated and not just screams “don’t die”? I especially love the sentence “leave no one behind”. As our sport grows and professionalize the media spectacle continues to highlight the exciting spear end of elite athletes. To build an organization that considers every athlete (which gives them money in form of entry fees) is the proper approach and a worth reminder.

(Page 16):

For several years, the HOKA UTMB Mont-Blanc has been developing an inclusion and diversity policy aimed at making its events accessible to all, including athletes with disabilities (visual, intellectual or physical).

I want to highlight this effort once more. I witnessed firsthand their adaptive team racing when running OCC in 2024 and found it absolutely mad and exciting and wonderful. This was just a great addition to the race and took nothing away from anyone else running the same trail. I loved it.

(Page 18):

“foster[ing] lasting connections between volunteers, residents, local organisations and the host territories it passes through.”

As UTMB has grown over the years this is obviously a fine balance they must strike between the event itself getting bigger and bigger and the communities they operate in not really having asked for any of this. And while their Finals are the biggest event in their portfolio there are similar challenges in every community around the world they operate in. In these communities the balance between the size of the organization putting on the event and the community that supports is even more out of whack. There they can’t even play the ‘we are local here too’ card. I’d love to know what learnings from Chamonix they are taking to their other events in their Series.

(Page 23):

Measuring the event’s carbon footprint

Many folks have pointed this out in various ways that measuring one’s carbon footprint is really a fool’s errand. It ends up shaming us into feeling guilty about every breath we take while large corporations and militaries around the world abuse their size at a scale that dwarfs every yogurt container we recycle. But it’s a metric we have, and maybe it’s better than doing nothing?

For race organizations the largest contributor to CO2 output is always the ‘transport’ to the event, so everything that the race organization does on the ground (recycling, reusing, public transportation) will barely move the needle. For UTMB to ONLY consider the transportation to the Finals when every runner had to qualify at one of their events is the perfect example where some of their efforts in this report fall short of showing the full picture. As an organization that requires these qualification races and owns them on top of it they should find a way to acknowledge this in their report.

(Page 27):

The HOKA UTMB Mont-Blanc has implemented a dedicated system to support participants, volunteers, companions and spectators in accessing collective transport solutions that reduce the carbon impact of on-site travel and road congestion.

I have no notes here. The system they created is great and exactly the sort of solution that benefits the communities around the mountain, the runners who are coming from far and don’t even want to drive a personal car and figure out parking and complicated maps. Absolutely worth every effort UTMB puts into this, and something every race of scale should be inspired by.

(Page 42):

Understanding economic repercussions
… for every €1 invested by local authorities, the event generates around €40 to €45 in local economic impact.

What incredible numbers to show of and share with any stakeholder in the region. Any event organizer would lick their lips if they’d be responsible for these sort of figures. Yes, FIFA and the IOC claim similar astronomical numbers that never actually materialize but this is an annual event and their actual infrastructure investments are minimal compared to these mega organizations, so I am inclined to believe UTMB here.

While I might’ve not been the target audience for this report, I massively appreciate UTMB collecting these numbers and sharing their focus and efforts.

From their press announcement:

The Western States Endurance Run (WSER) and YueZou Culture have entered into an exclusive media licensing agreement for the Chinese-speaking region, marking a new step in bringing one of the world’s most iconic trail and ultrarunning events closer to Chinese runners and trail running communities.
…
Through this partnership, YueZou Culture will serve as WSER’s official and exclusive licensed media partner in the Chinese-speaking region, supporting live broadcast distribution, race promotion, Chinese-language content, and localized storytelling around WSER.

This is a fascinating announcement indeed.

Western States currently has seven races that function as official qualifiers in China:

• DL 100 106km
• Great Wall by UTMB 103km
• Mount Yun by UTMB – UMY 159.6km
• Nike ACG Ultra-Trail Chongli 168km
• Nike ACG Ultra-Trail Chongli 100km
• Ninghai Ultra Trail 109km
• Xiamen by UTMB 104km

I wonder if this will this mean Dbo’s and Corrine’s live coverage will be dubbed into Chinese, or will YueZou Culture get their own broadcasting booth at the finish line, and possibly additional cameras/coverage along the course?

Just in time for Western States 2026 Nike finally gets their Radical AirFlow Shirt into their online store (women, men). The shirt Caleb Olson wore and and made a statement with by winning and choosing to wear a very weird looking ‘holey’ shirt. Since then ACG athletes have been wearing the shirt at countless races and training runs photoshoots. Further, Nike sent the product to Influencers far and wide, who shared their high-gloss group run pics over these past few months. Now – a year later, the product is finally going to be available in their online store, in the same color: white.

I know nothing about product development and supply chains, but this feels like it has taken Nike A LONG TIME. Aren’t we all already bored of that look? Why did it take Nike a full year to ship the same product in the same color? Clearly they weren’t “just testing” it at Western States. Letting their top athlete wear the product on one of the most visible stage is a statement. And it got people talking. Making a shirt with holes in it can’t be as complicated as making an iPhone, or event a new shoe with an unproven carbon plate? Feels like a huge missed opportunity to wait so long to get that product to market. It reminds me of Adidas’ Tom Evans shoes he wore to win Western States. We got a teaser the following August at UTMB but the shoes didn’t become fully available to the public until we had all lost interest in them. And those were actual shoes – more complicated to produce, less visible for marketing purposes. But, what do I know?

From their press announcement from a couple of days ago:

Strava, the app for active people with more than 195 million users in more than 185 countries, today announced the launch of a Model Context Protocol (MCP) connector that lets subscribers query their own Strava data through Claude and get in-depth insights about their training.
…
Once a subscriber connects their Strava account to Claude, they can ask a series of natural-language questions relating to their own data.

Building tools to increase user engagement during a time when social media engagement in general is falling rapidly is probably a smart thing for Strava (the number of kudos I give and receive has fallen sharply in recent months). And the effectiveness can be measured in “engagement”, not necessarily delivering actual usefulness, so letting folks ask AI within the app if their training is going well seems reasonable – no matter if the reply is actually true.

Just a bit over a month until the Merrell Skyrunner USA National Series kicks off. Four races invite you to chase the peaks across America and battle a world class competition:

• Red Newt Racing’s Whiteface Skyrace
• Rock Candy Running’s Beast of Big Creek
• Black Wolf Endurance’s Skeetawk Skyline Scramble
• Six03 and Marathon Sport’s Kismet Cliff Run

Kismet Cliff will serve as the season final and offers a $20,000 in price purse.

Let’s go!

German superstar athlete Ida-Sophie Hegemann completed the Sella Ronda loop in the Dolomites in a new FKT time of 05:03:01. From her Instagram:

I had already planned to run the Sella Ronda record (FKT = fastest known time) last year, but this year it fit perfectly into my training before the next races. The nutrition was good and I carried everything with me, just like in a race. Except for a few more gels and fluids, because I ran unsupported.

More on the route from FKT.com:

This is the trail run variant of the classic ski tour around the Sella Massif. The trail runs through the towns of Selva, Corvara, Arabba and close to Canazei allowing to start in any of these villages. Best of all, it’s a Marathon distance !

I’m sharing this effort here not just because it’s in a stunningly beautiful area of the Alps but also because Ida-Sophie is one of the few athletes who puts an FKT attempt regularly into her calendar. During the pandemic a few years ago – when races were cancelled – we had this moment when many of the top athletes were all chasing FKT routes, which made for a fun and unique time in our sport. This has largely stopped with very few athletes still making this a regular part of their year. Ida-Sophie still does – and for that, and for the new Sella Ronda FKT and massive kudos!

After linking to Kilian’s first post it would be wrong of me to not share the follow up and teased MRI results:

“Moderate hydrops. Horizontal rupture in the anterior horn of the lateral meniscus with marked edema in the adjacent Hoffa’s fat pad. Cartilage damage centrally on the patella with adjacent bone marrow edema.”

No idea what any of this means, but none if it sounds good. He says that he’ll be at the starting line of WSER, and will try – and is forced into – a different approach to training and preparation.

Of course we wish him speedy recover, it’s just too fun to watch him race. But I also want to use that moment to remind the collective trail media that the WSER lineup – and any big race lineup for that matter – is just not not a done deal until the actual gun goes off. I know sports media in general deals A LOT in wish-casting and dreaming about the “what ifs”, but especially in the trail running world there are just a lot of uncertainties as we’re dealing with individual athletes – and not a team – in a still fairly new sport and under researched sport.

Patience, grasshopper, patience.

It is time again. Time for the annual moment to reflect and celebrate this very blog/website/experiment. I’m four years into doing this thing I call Electric Cable Car. A lot has changed around me and a lot keeps changing. I will get to some of the changes, but first, a look at what has been and is happening at ECC.

If you’re interested in catching up on what I wrote in previous years, here’s my intro and about page with the full list of all my anniversary posts.

Let’s start with some numbers:

For the full year 2025 I ended up publishing 497 short posts and 39 full articles, but only 13 episodes of my podcast Singletrack – which makes me sad, but that’s for another day. Overall that’s fewer overall posts than the year before, but with my current workload on various other projects – hello TRFF, hello Beast – it’s about as much as I can publish here. This still comes to an average of about 46 posts per month, or 1.5 posts per date, which feels about right.

Traffic in 2025 was up 66% over the previous year. And so far for 2026 I am tracking about 85% growth over 2025. Something seems to be happening, and I hope it’s not all AI crawlers.

And this one is just for fun: Overall I’ve written 423,800 words, resulting in 2,108 full articles, link posts, and podcast announcements since the first day of Electric Cable Car back in 2022.

In 2025 I also launched the ‘ECC Live Ticker’ for several of the longest and most important trail events. I’m still experimenting with it and am trying to find the usefulness and manageability of it all. Others have started offering similar features, which I welcome and wish them luck – it’s hard!

Last month I also pushed the first bigger layout revision on the homepage since ECC first launched. Now, all race results – which have proven popular – are out of the main feed and are neatly tucked on the homepage, for easy access. I really like the way this reorganizes the homepage. I hope you find it as useful as I do. One fun challenge with this is it requires – or invites me rather – to write a very brief highlight of the race results. How do you capture in 20 words or less a weekend of events with thousands of runners and multiple distances? What’s the one story worth featuring there? A fun challenge indeed.

Now with the caretaking taken care of, let’s talk about the artificial elephant in the room.

When I started ECC I had two goals: 1. To build a website that I love to use everyday – I know how to write code and love designing websites, and 2. To give myself a platform to write, which I’d been searching for for years, decades even. I had made several attempts in the past to share my life (how quaint!) to report on a topic – technology (overdone), politics (exhausting) but nothing stuck over all these years. ‘Endurance running, mountain sport, and trail culture’ is a topic broad enough to give me fuel to write here every day. But most importantly I am truly passionate about this area of interest. In some form or another I engage with it daily, professionally and personally. I run, I love the outdoors, mountain culture is my favorite culture.

A couple major things have changed in these past four years I’ve been publishing ECC (and the eight years I’ve been producing Singletrack, plus the additional four years I co-owned The Outdoor Society before that):

First there was the transition to, and then away from social media. The “away from” part we’re still in the midst of it. But the “to” part massively shifted the way people use the internet. Everything became siloed, hard to track and link to. The algorithms – primed to keep us outraged and filled with ads – are ushering in a departure from social media as average users get increasingly frustrated with their inability to keep tabs on their favorite accounts, voices, creators, and yes, brands – the very thing that propelled social media to the forefront of “world wide web” usage for most people.

When I started ECC I wasn’t so much banking on this, I was more just being stubborn and wanting my own website, my domain, my blog as a creative playground. I grew up with the thrill of publishing directly to a place anyone could visit, and I just created it to get that piece back into my life. But since then Twitter has died, Instagram is becoming useless, and everyone is splintered to countless little siloes, from WhatsApp Groups to little Mastodon servers. But aside from people fleeing to various platforms and tools the other things folks rediscovering is the written word. Most social media sites have pivoted to rich media like video, but these take lots of time to create, so people want to go back to basics – they write.

What an incredible time this is for ECC. I get to link to people’s writing again. Yes, there are still podcasts – but they come with transcripts now, and there is still tons and tons of videos on Youtube, but what makes my day, and work here at ECC fun is to be able to link to people’s writing. That’s a big portion of what makes this blog shine and it creates such an incredible ‘system of record’ or ‘log book’ for the trail running world. I link to what someone wrote. I share a sentence or paragraph of what that person published. I give credit (link back) and I track (searchable) conversations, comments, posts and articles. I don’t post every race results, I don’t share every product announcement from a brand, and neither do I post training updates from the elites. But what I post I have a comment on and try to weave into a bigger story of what I believe is important as trail running progresses, evolves, grows and professionalizes.

The second big development, and that has really arrived in the trail running space over the last six month is the adoption of AI.

• AI is being used to write anywhere: this still hard for me to catch sometimes and it’s even harder to comprehend. Why would a person who wants to have their voice heard let AI write for them?
• AI is being used to modify workflows for people. The reliance on existing tools, apps, SAAS offerings, and platforms is shifting and people are building their personal stack of how they navigate their world and the internet.
• AI is heralded as the toolbox to create the next products: this is, so far, much hyped but very little actually field tested.

How do I use AI?

• I don’t use AI to write – doh.
• I don’t use it for research. AI is just too often wrong in the most charming and confident way that I don’t trust it, at all.
• I probably should use it for proof-reading (I know, I know, but I am reluctant as of yet as I don’t want it to change my voice too much.)
• I cautiously use it for small code edits. In the past I searched the web and mostly found the answer to a WordPress PHP problem I had on Stack Overflow or another forum for WordPress developers. These searches I have always relied on when writing code, be it HTML, CSS, Javascript, or PHP, but over the last couple of years online search has gotten so bad, so gummed up, so useless, that it’s been maddening to find the right solutions. When I can’t find the answer on the open web, I use one of the AI tools and sometimes find the answer there. This is a minimal workflow change for me, I essentially just augment the regular web search with an additional AI search if I can’t find the answer in a reasonable time.

This is where I am currently at with my AI usage on ECC. Am I looking at what others are building and wondering if there’s something that I can adopt to help me and ECC? In short: yes, but very very cautiously.

Clearly the AI tools are coming. But I currently hesitate calling them actual solutions. They are tools and how much they can solve still waits to be seen. We’re still overhyping the glitzy interfaces that are being teased. Behind the overly verbose code experiments there’s still a massive task waiting to bring any of these things to life – and turn them into anything resembling a sustainable contribution to our trail media landscape.

As a writer and observer of culture all these changes and developments are my fuel. There’s movement, there’s excitement. People’s are building stuff and I get to report on it – good or bad. This is what makes getting out of bed in the mornings fun. This is what I created Electric Cable Care for, and this is why I’m excited for the coming year.

From our friends at TRFF, Self Care comes a new partnership with Washington State’s premier 100 Mile event Cascade Crest, along with friends of Three Magnets Brewing and sponsor of CC, Speedland:

Cascade Crusher – Pale

Brewed with a new PNW pilsner malt built for hoppy beers, balanced bittering from Magnum, and highlighted with Cascade, Vera, and Dolcita. Expect light pine and floral notes up front, with mango, pear, and cara orange from two standout newer hops.

Get your pre-orders in now and finish your final training weeks on a delicious note.

Open letter to TrailCon via Instagram (and LinkedIn):

We’re disappointed.

[TrailCon] describes itself as a gathering for “all stakeholders of the sport,” a place that “welcomes all voices,” and a platform focused on the future of trail running.

Yet from what has been publicly shared, there appears to be no meaningful Para athlete, disability representation, or other runners from our allied communities within those conversations.

This matters.

My response to the announcement of the full schedule by TrailCon was positive. Which just shows how ones bias allows one to be lazy at times and get blinded. This schedule is very homogeneous. In fact it almost feels like it’s just one brand activation after the other, as if Dbo and team found a way to charge the various brands a concierge fee to conduct their activations in Olympic Valley between Broken Arrow and Western States. But, while this might be cynical and I want to reserve my full judgement until I experience TrailCon myself next months, Zachary Friedley’s point is way more valid and important.

Brand new collab with ‘master of collabs’ The North Face and Sky High Farm – which I had never heard of before but love their logo. Collab done right, right there.

Over the past couple of weeks there’s been plenty of chatter about collabs that missed their launch moment and a lawsuit that maybe should’ve been a collab, so seeing The North Face doing what they do best – I pretty much every single one of their collabs, even the high fashion ones – is just a breath of fresh air.

Also: do visit ‘Sky High Farms Goods‘ and check out who they are and what else they do – so good.

From their press email:

TrailCon, presented by On, today released the complete schedule for its 2026 edition, revealing three days of programming that bring together the biggest names in trail running, endurance sports, and outdoor culture for an unprecedented gathering at Palisades Tahoe, California. The event runs June 22–24 and is free and open to the public.

I’m a bit bummed to miss the first few hours on Monday – I’ll be only flying into Reno that afternoon. I had been under the impression that the first day was going to be a sort of optional. But I’m most excited about the ‘Lowa Dry-Athalon’ on Tuesday afternoon:

Developed in partnership with the U.S. Biathlon, the Dry-Athlon reimagines the classic biathlon format for the trail running world—swapping snow for singletrack and skis for trail shoes.

The event invites all attendees to compete in teams of four in a high-energy relay that tests both speed on the trail and composure at the shooting range—using laser rifles, with no live ammunition or real weapons involved.

What a fun “activation” to bring to this event. Love it.

I previously linked to Sam King’s blog ‘The Trail Ledger’ and now we’re back with another juicy “article” ‘The Toll Road to the Start Line‘. In it Sam “writes” the following paragraph:

Amer Sports, which owns Salomon as well as the UTMB brand, built a global racing circuit whose qualifying structure systematically directs runners toward races that pay licensing fees back to Amer Sports. The runner chasing UTMB entry is, in aggregate, a customer of an Amer Sports product ecosystem. Their training shoe purchases, their gear, and now their qualifying race entry fees all flow, at various removes, through the same corporate architecture.

Of course this is all complete horseshit and if you take a step back and look at the full article you quickly the entire thing is just AI slop – and that’s the kindest way of describing it.

In the comments Brian Metzler tries to correct Sam to which he gives just single word reply:

Fascinating!

His one word replies can mean two things: Either Sam’s genuinely fascinated to learn this fact – because he didn’t do any research himself for the article, or it’s the classic, dismissive “fascinating” as in “I don’t give a fuck about facts”. Which one you think is it?

The article has several other offensive “inaccuracies” like calling Olympic Valley Squaw Valley, but it’s not worth digging in further.

But my favorite part of the thing is the disclosures at the bottom of the article:

A Note on Data:
…
Amer Sports’ ownership of the UTMB brand and Salomon is documented through public corporate disclosures

The confidence at which these AI tools lie and at which the publishers share their findings lies is just breathtaking.

I guess Brian and I can add ‘AI fact checker’ to your resumes now – sigh.

This one is less significant and a change back to how it was in the past:

This year at Hardrock, we are headed back to Grouse Gulch!

Shifting back to our routes (pun intended), the Animas Forks Aid Station is moving back to the Grouse Gulch Aid Station. This shortens the course by about a half mile, adjusts the distances between aid stations before and after Grouse Gulch slightly, and updates crew movements.

The website has the the updated course including GPX file.

Big news from Chamonix for the upcoming OCC race at the UTMB Finals this coming summer. (This seems to be a permanent change – not just a one off):

OCC 2026: the course is evolving 

This year, the OCC is reinventing its high-altitude section with a brand-new route between Col de Balme and Col des Posettes. 

What’s new: 
– A new high point: Tête de Balme (2,321 m) 
– More trails on the Swiss side
– The climb to La Flégère has been removed from the course 

The 2026 course is now 60 km with 3,500 m of elevation gain.

A speculation as to why the changes needed to be made from French Reference Trail (auto-translated):

According to information circulating in the Chamonix trail community, tensions have arisen between the UTMB organization and the consorts of La Flégère and Lognan, collective owners of the land concerned. These landowners would have toughened their conditions of access to the passage, complicated negotiations for the 2026 edition. A reality that the organization has not officially commented on in detail, but which would partly explain this choice of alternative route.

This all gives us plenty to speculate and compare GPX profiles in the coming days. But I want to make a couple of quick points before processing it more:

• Changing somewhat historic routes will always leave the super fans in a bit of a pickle as it makes comparing past times now more difficult or even moot.
• If UTMB is able to separate the routes for UTMB, CCC, OCC in big section onto their own trails this leaves the trails with fewer total runners – which is great for the environment – or would allow them to let more runners into the specific races.
• Now I want to run OCC again, time to get more stones!

From folks who know the route and area a bit better than me:

Some are saying that the new high point and trails selected in Switzerland are a really nice addition, but missing on the iconic climb to La Flégère – while “just” a boring ski hill – is a bummer.

Press release I missed back in January of this year:

Näak, the Canadian sports nutrition company founded in 2016 with a mission to create healthy and sustainable sports nutrition, without making any compromises to performance, has signed a four-year contract extension with world-renowned trail-running series UTMB. Beyond continuing the partnership with UTMB, Näak is leveling up its sponsorship to the Official Premier Partner tier.

Good news for Näak, bad news for runners who don’t like Näak. Does anyone actually LOVE Näak products and use it as their main nutrition even when not forced to at an UTMB aid station?

I mean the real news is that Kilian wrote a blog post about his Zegama race:

The climbing felt okay, but the flats and downhills were a different story. By the time I reached Sancti Spiritu, I realized that because the second half of the race is mostly non-technical flats and descents, I wouldn’t be able to race at full tilt.

And I guess the real real news is that Kilian is injured with just a few weeks before Western States:

But once the noise passed, I knew it was time to listen to what my body had been trying to say for weeks, and get my knee properly checked.

But what I care about is that he too can’t resist the temptation to join the nazi-infested VC toy. Gross and sad. Kilian did not share this blog post on his actual blog.

Side note: Who’s keeping track on the all star lineup for Western States elites who are actually all battling injuries at the moment? (My experiment from a few months ago has ended – the Substack version of ECC is deleted.)

Via press email:

A new UTMB World Series adventure is set to unfold in the Vietnamese highlands as Vietnam Highlands Trail by UTMB® debuts in Đà Lạt, Vietnam, from January 8–10, 2027. 

Held under the patronage of the Vietnam People’s Public Security Sports Association and the Lam Dong Provincial People’s Committee, and co-organized by Nexus Sport Events, this new event marks the arrival of the UTMB World Series circuit in Vietnam with the ambition of becoming a benchmark trail running event in the region.

This is the first new event for the 2027 calendar, and it will take the earliest spot on the calendar – previously the year kicked off with the Arc of Attrition. The official events page lists a 100K, 50K, 20K and a couple shorter distances – registration is opening soon.

The UTMB World Series continues its expansion in Asia.

ECC’S UTMB World Series Calendar is updated.

Pulled the info from the Wikipedia page.

The spectacle was founded by Australian businessman Aron D’Souza:

He was, together with billionaire Peter Thiel, involved in the 2013 Bollea v. Gawker lawsuit, which led to Gawker filing for bankruptcy.

The quote already mentioned megalomaniac, tech billionaire, and antichrist lecturer Peter Thiel.

And the investor behind it:

In February 2025, businessman Donald Trump Jr. said that his venture fund 1789 Capital would be involved in an investment round, saying “The Enhanced Games represent the future – real competition, real freedom, and real records being smashed. This is about excellence, innovation, and American dominance on the world stage – something the MAGA movement is all about.”^[53][54] Others include Saudi prince Khaled bin Alwaleed Al Saud,^[55] and cryptocurrency investors Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss.

What a fantastic group of human beings – only the best.

The whole thing was propped up to market and sell supplements.

“Cocaine and heroin will not be allowed” according to Aron D’Souza, yeah, right.

Oh, and barely any records were actually broken this weekend… maybe they should’ve allowed cocaine after all.