Olympian to co-founder of HYROX | Mo Fuerste | Ep 48

0:00Mo, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me. For the people that may not know who you are, would you just be able to sum yourself up? Yeah, happy to. My name is Mo, actually my name is Moritz, but I only hear that name when someone's really mad at me. So I like to be called Mo and that's how everyone calls me. I'm one of the co-founders of High Rocks. That's what I've been doing for the last 10 years now, more or less. In my first life, I was an athlete. I played field hockey. so that was the better part of my first 41 years and I have two daughters, they're 10 and 8 and they're amazing and apart from that I'm married and I live in Hamburg, Germany That's incredible and I think you played it down there but you've been an Olympian, right?

0:48Yeah, I've been to three Olympic Games 2008 Beijing, 2012 London and then my last ones were Rio 2016 we had a very, very good team over a decade with the German field hockey team. We won two goals and a bronze. And yeah, it was a very successful time. Obviously, lucky timing of my birth being mixed together with a very, very, very good group of people. I think at one point we had almost like the best six, seven players in the world were all on our team. So that was very fortunate. And of course, I mean, I took away so much from the Olympics. as being the definitely most incredible professional sports event in the world.

1:34So trying to take away a lot of things there that can help us now with what we do. Yeah, for sure. What was it like actually going to the Olympics? Look, the first time I went, I was 21. Beijing was very, very difficult because we didn't qualify at the beginning. So we had to go through the back door, basically. qualification tournament in Japan in 2007 and eventually made it, went there. It was a weird time back then with political things going on between China and Tibet at the time. So we were not really allowed to go downtown. And we were very much caged up in the Olympic village, which was amazing.

2:21but um not i mean i haven't seen anything in in beijing except for the village and the hockey pitch which which is fine but a hockey tournament goes on for two and a half weeks so it was a very very tough time there but then of course i mean experiencing the olympics life was just it's just incredible it's it's literally i think that is the pinnacle of what you can and what you would want to achieve as an athlete whatever sport that is in the olympics obviously you're from just that mindset of 10 ,000 people in the same village. That's how I sometimes describe it. There's literally 10 ,000 people in the same small village that you see every day at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and you walk past by, and you know exactly what they've been through, suffered, put in to make it to the Olympics.

3:09I feel that's a little bit like walking around here at the World Champs. Whoever you meet, that person being 65 years old or an elite athlete, you know exactly what they put in and what they had to go through in order to qualify, right? Because it's not easy to qualify. And I think this is a certain level of appreciation of each other that is very comparable to life in the Olympic Village. Yeah, it definitely bonds you. I think you know what people have suffered, the sacrifices that they made for the training to get to world champs. And like I say, you have a mutual respect for that. So you get off on the right foot with people.

3:46Everyone's like-minded. And it's been genuinely this world champs. And I've been lucky to, I watched Manchester world champs. I was at these world champs competing. Then obviously last year in Chicago. And then this year. And just seeing the level improve every single time. But every single one, the attention to detail is phenomenal. And I think that's one thing that yourself and High Rocks have done across the board. Let's take it back to when Hyros, when, what was the, why did Hyros come about? Yeah. So, I mean, I guess the shortcut, because I think also the story has been tried to explain quite a few times, but in, so Christian and, and myself and our third founding partner, we, we were on a different project.

4:42We're all from Hamburg, Germany. So we were on a different project work related together. Were you all working together? We were not, but for that particular project, which had to do with the Olympics, by the way, because we were considering teaming up to promote Hamburg as the bidding city for the Olympics in 24, that ended up being in Paris. But Hamburg was one of the candidates at the time, and we teamed up for a project to bid for that, together with Hamburg, and that's how we got to know each other, the three of us. and that was in 2013. So three years later, after the Olympics in Rio, when I basically quit playing hockey, I got out and my third founding partner, Michael, and myself were thinking what to do.

5:32And then he had the idea to call Christian because we had such a good time three years ago working together and seeing what he's up to. And funny enough, he was not up to much because he also just quit his job. And so we said, okay, let's team up. We were a good triangle back then. So that's when we started. And very fast, Christian and I took over the operational part of that and let the company that we founded at the time. And Christian had this idea that was, let's say, blurry, but more or less the context of what Hierox is now. and we had a few other ideas, wanted to do some consulting for brands, for athletes and stuff like that.

6:15But then he pitched this thought of the void in the world of sports. And the idea was running and functional fitness workouts to put that together to a competition, what it now obviously is. But at the time we weren't sure. In the first couple of months we were like, okay, maybe we should bring a CrossFit competition to Germany or make it a little bit more accessible or maybe how can we have more people competing at these events. And then we started, at the same time, we always started working on this concept of runs, workouts, and how can that look like, which workouts make sense, what is the perfect overall finisher time that you would try to put in for average athletes or age group athletes, right?

7:01So we said, okay, 80, 90 minutes, if we can, what would that entitle? Okay, how many runs is it? Six, six times, okay, that's only, you know. So this is how we kind of put things together. And then I think really the spark of it all, like this, and there's a TED Talk from Simon Sinek that I quote quite often where he's talking about the golden circle and that big products and the best products in the world start with a why. You're basically solving a problem that exists and not necessarily with the product, the how or the what you do, right? But it's the why. Why are you doing that? the most successful products in the world are that, right?

7:43Or start with that thought. And our why was that we heard that 300 million people are signed up in a gym in the world and they all say that fitness is their sport. Going to the gym is their sport. We said that's not a sport. That doesn't count for us. That's training and that's amazing. But it's not a sport in the sense how I define sports. And the funny thing is that that also counts for the word training because even apparel companies like the big ones that we're dealing with now, they didn't really define the word training. So when you asked someone at Puma, what does training mean? They would come up with this blurry explanation of, it's going to the gym and working out.

8:26And you're like, if you're a tennis player and you play tennis three times a week, that's training for tennis, right? That's also training. so how do you define that actual that that actual word and and so we said okay we basically what we are trying to do here is we're trying to define the sport for what these people are training because they're not training for necessarily something they just go to the gym because they want to be fit healthy i don't know be able to take off the shirt in front of the mirror and look good um or whatever reason it may be but it's not for preparing training for something specifically yeah and so i mean it's a long answer to a simple question but in the end that is um that is kind of that from that point on it was always the definition of okay there are 300 million people 52 percent are saying that fitness is their sport let's give them a sport and that's exactly what you did that's what we tried and uh it took some time obviously i mean you know the you know the heritage and narrative a little bit but uh and there's a until covid phase and there's a post-covid phase i guess right um and uh yeah it was a lot of hustle and and and understanding the trying to understand the world until covid then the breakdown there globally and then ever since post-covid and i say this a lot it has to do with luck timing um this all has to play together to be successful but then again also as much luck as you can have or timing can be right if the product is not good it will not work and i think we i think i mean looking back now it's funny but because of the progress as you just mentioned but i think we created a pretty good product yeah how did you come up with the selection of exercises a lot of people ask me this and uh Yeah, why is Georg for the first workout?

10:22Yeah, it's funny because back at the time, Mintra Tilly, who was the first global race director, and she was working a lot on the sports product together with her husband, Jacob, who is still our global chief of operations, and Christian, obviously, myself. There was a bunch of workouts on the table. How many did you have? Was there like a big selection? was you thinking like 16 to start with like you know and you had to narrow yeah yeah no i wouldn't say so that was not really how we did it it was more it was we wish we just literally put things together and then we we had and i couldn't even tell you that like that was the first approach and then that was the second it was more like a few things were very clear at the beginning so for example the ski erg also the rowing they were they are in for two very simple reasons first of in a start wave organized race like this the the start is the only real point the first workout is the only real time when you can really have the ski erg in regards to how many but because you know exactly how many people will enter that station at that point rowing already is quite complicated for us because we have to provide quite a lot of rowers because it's possible that by the time a lot of people are at the rowing station at the same time because the first start was slower, the second start was very fast.

11:51So it's quite complicated. And these are all things you have to consider, right? Because then you need the setup and you need the partner, like Concept2 in this case, to provide enough row. So there are a lot of logistical questions behind that. Then again, SkiErg and rowing are two stations where undeniably you will never get an average age group not you not you guys but age groupers talking you will never get below for 35 minutes in average which is adding already 10 minutes to the overall tally of your time for the race right and again what i said before we wanted to get to 80 90 minutes in average so you have to have some workouts where as much as the athletes train you will not finish a ski erg in two minutes ever right impossible so um so that's also for example part of it then we also have to say we are in the end creating a product and the ski erg and also the rowing machine first of all i think they look pretty cool pretty different this as you said nobody ever used a ski erg before right suddenly hundreds of thousands of gyms in the world are concealed maybe not hundreds of thousands but a lot of gyms in the world are considering getting a ski erg because before Hyrox there was no ski ergs in gyms and commercial gyms yes obviously there was in crossfit boxes but there wasn't in a commercial gym you wouldn't have a ski erg exactly and so as a product that's also of course a plus on our side at the beginning talking to Concept2 telling them look why would Concept2 at the beginning say hey we give you the equipment because we believe that's going to be a good product so we also had a bargaining chip saying look we're going to make this ski erg big for you that they had but as you said nobody was using it so that was one of of course also one of the reasons um and then i don't even know if it's an english word but judgeability so you need to take care of the fact that i mean we maybe talk about judging later but after all it's not simple if you need a hundred if you have start waves of 60 if you need 60 judges at every station it's very difficult for us to organize that to provide what is it 460 80 judges per event you know so the ski erg is a station where you're okay in age group racing mainly to have your six seven judges that can overlook most of the ski ergs right to make sure 1 000 okay off you go whereas in the war balls you definitely need a much higher much higher number of one to one or one to two depending on the how well the target works um you know and that's so these are all these were all elements of the decision making and then um the uh let's say

14:46injury kind of potential problem, I would say. So box jumps, for example, were for a long time on the table. And then we realized if you would have to do 100 box jumps and then the age groupers, again, always thinking from the age group perspective, if they get tired and then suddenly someone cracks an ankle on the box because you're not jumping up, it becomes very difficult if it's after six workouts or whatever or falls down and just hits a head on a box next to it or you know all the and again you need a one-to-one judge mainly because it could like it could be potentially fatal like uh like it's a very dangerous exercise and if you think how many people on the scale that harris has grown to what how many people like 1.5 million people on high rocks like uh that's that's there is a chance there exactly too big of a risk right so we had to throw that out again and then monkey bars were in for a long time monkey bars yeah and then we realized with like sports physiologists and scientists that um age groupers impossible uh especially on the on the women's side uh it's very difficult to hold your body weight above the shoulders um i mean the top athletes don't get me wrong they are female athletes are all capable of doing that if you've got either either on that don't worry no but we're talking about the 62 year old grandma maybe even right and she will not be able to finish monkey bars and we said we we want to create a race that is very accessible and that everybody can finish because that's and again and i get this i see this a lot on social we didn't invent anything We didn't invent a sled.

16:29We didn't invent a wall ball or a lunge or whatever, a squat, right? We just put things together that we consider make sense in order to create a race out of that. And so if you do that, you want to make it accessible and you need people to be able to finish it because otherwise you'd never have the positive experience of, you know. And we, again, also with the system that we marathon. That's a marathon example. everybody can finish a marathon because you can walk if you want. It takes you ages, but if that's what you want, just finish. You are able to do that in most cities if there's not the car coming in the back of it after eight hours or whatever.

17:13And that's what we want. So, yeah, again, judgeability, accessibility, and then things that also pay into the idea of it being a product after all. These were the main reasons why we chose what we chose. And then I think it's so fascinating that High Rocks is a complete, almost a 50-50 split between males and females. But there's not many other sports that are down the line. I think you've actually got more female. Is it slightly more? Slightly more in some countries already. So the fact that, was that kind of like, when you're thinking about exercise selection, was you thinking potentially what females would enjoy or males would enjoy it?

17:56So say, for example, if you put in a strict press, for example, a strict overhead press, I don't think, obviously, females like to train like that and do that. But if they'd have to put on a serious amount of muscle upper body, which some girls may like, some girls may not like. But obviously, I don't know how to explain this. like that there's certain movements that you consider more males like to do like a bench press for example or an overhead strict press uh whereas females might not like to do that they might to lunge more or they might to um was that ever kind of like a thought 100 but i have to say i don't i can't take the credit for the 50 50 split in that regard that we didn't create it in order to get a 50-50 split.

18:50But what I said before, we did create it in a way that we wanted to make it very accessible for everyone. And I think that is the reason why, after all, it's a 50-50 split because there is no reason for women to say, I will not do it because these things don't exist. And we see that, especially on the age group racers, that you have 70, what was the oldest athlete? Rosie from Mexico on Friday, 76 years old, two hours 48, fought herself through the world champs. And that's amazing. She can do it. Of course, now you would have a few people that would question the depth on her wall bolts, but I don't think that's in the center of what's important here.

19:39And, you know, so that's what we, I think that's what we try to create, that it's accessible, there's no reason for anyone to say I can't do it because in theory it's possible. Yeah, no. And I like to call it like a conveyor belt system of how Hirox is set up. You've got start waves where people are starting every 10 minutes. and before high rocks there wasn't there was obviously fitness events there was crossfit events there was competitions like you're in the uk you've got national fitness games there was things like this and i i remember going to these events and you do four 15 minute workouts but you'd be there for 10 hours and for me i just thought oh it's a long day and then when you actually look at the amount of people competing because there's only four people per team and then over the day there's only 500 people or a maximum of 500 people that could potentially compete where i see high rocks obviously from like a business perspective as well and just like an efficiency you know someone can go to a high rocks be done undusted with bits like be in there register uh for their events actually do the events and be out within two to three hours if they wanted is that fast enough and then you can go and enjoy the city you can go wherever you've traveled to and it's like this thing that you can do if if you want to you can be in and out um and i just thought that that's kind of like a game changer who thought of like this the system like that Yeah, that is, I mean, Christian came into this after also creating like cycling races, triathlons for a long time in his former profession.

21:32And again, this is also part of what I said before in regards to we didn't invent in that sense anything, but we took what we consider the best things out of existing sports. So the start wave logic exists in triathlon. It exists in cycling events. it makes it very easy to as you said to get a high amount of people through the race over a day and um and it's it's very efficient what's the maximum amount of people you've had like racing in one day the maximum amount in one day is almost 10 000 10 000 people and that's crazy considering that most events are are indoors in convention centers and obviously incredible places uh it's so special in the start wave so if we in some venues now we can have the 1k lap right where it's just one big lap if you have that then everything spreads over much more distance and you have the runner spread of one kilometer if it's half everyone's spread on half the size right so you can we can have start waves of almost 100 or maybe even 105 and then we you roughly have 100 start waves per day.

22:42So if you do that, well, 90 start waves per day. So you have not 10 ,000 start slots, but 10 ,000 people, including the doubles. Yeah, wow, that's ongoing. That's super impressive. Yeah, it's efficient. And again, this is also important to understand, I guess, the starting narrative of what we did was to create an age group of sport. we always if you want to create a sport we always said from the get-go you need that aspirational part you need the superstars of the sport you need to create that field for them but still also on the other hand you need the grassroots you need the age groupers you need the people that are willing to come to these events and just race for the sake of pbs or just having fun or just finishing or just doing the double with your wife or girlfriend boyfriend whatever or or even as you said before in the in the women's doubles which is our most taken up category globally is it right yeah interesting yeah it's funny because i think you know i think women are really competitive they just don't like the boys talk of who's the fittest let's go they're more like you know they choose their friends and they race and they set a time and they maybe even don't tell anyone but they're really competitive they will maybe not admit it but they're fighting for the PB.

24:03And some are also competitive with others. Of course, you see this here at World Champs, but at all the events globally, you see that all these smiley faces after the finish line of people just achieving their goal or maybe missing it by inches and then coming back, trying to train for it for the next race. And yeah, I really love to see that. Yeah. And a lot of people say, oh, would it not get boring because it's the same thing over and over again? But they're the people that have never been to a high rocks because as soon as you go to a high rocks the first one that you do you've also almost got to accept you're going to make mistakes because there's so many little factors there's so many of course like you you can train for the everything you can have the perfect technique but even just putting it together you you might do your first high rocks and and you might uh not run the rocks on yeah for example and then you you get your finish time and you're like oh this is amazing like this uh with everything that you've got you know the dj people supporting uh running around like it's the most incredible thing ever but you're looking at that time and you're like i can go faster yeah of course and you're like i need i need to do another one and that is everyone's instant thing as soon as they cross that line they're like i'm proud but i'm not satisfied and i want to go again and uh it's crazy that you've uh you've come up with but i tell you two Two funny things about, maybe not funny, but two things about it first.

25:26And again, we took the best out of existing sports. What is the first question if some of your mates tells you he or she ran a marathon? What's the first question everybody gets asked? What time? What was your time? And the funny thing is, the answer doesn't matter. If that person tells you 2.55, you're like, oh, my God, wow. If that person tells you 3.55, you're like, oh, my God, amazing. If that person tells you 455, you will be like, oh, my God, amazing. I mean, because you know that person and you know if it's a 455 person, you know, like, great achievement. You know, you can judge whether that, you know, if you would tell me 455, I would say, were you sick or what happened that day?

26:07You know, but it's like you have this instant idea of what it means. And also for every person that does it, finishing means something because you did a, I did a 408 and I'm going to scratch those eight minutes off, right? That's what gets people coming back potentially if they not just use it as a bucket list event. And that's exactly, as you mentioned in Hierarchs, exactly the same. But then on the other side, where are these questions coming from that it's always the same and so boring? If you look at that narrative, that's also interesting to analyze because I tell you, I highly doubt that anyone from the triathlon world or tennis world would ask you that question.

26:46Isn't it boring that it's always the same? because did triathlon ever decide to start rowing instead of swimming next year? No, because there is not a single sport in the world, not a single one, that would change the overall format of the sport. In training, that's happening. In methodologies, in workouts, of course, you need to spice it up. But tennis has been played on the same field for thousands of years, I don't know, probably not. marathon is the same distance for ages and it's the most successful sport in in the world of running so you know there are so many examples i mean of course some rules change sometimes and you discuss with a football they might get rid of offside at one point i don't know you know but you would not make the pitch shorter in order to have more goals or i don't know you know that's that's just not what sports do and and i and i think people have to understand that and if they want to do something else at times for the fun of it, do it.

27:50Of course. No, I completely agree. The 100 meter has never changed. It's been around for 100 years or whatever and it's still 100 meter. And we all watch it, right? Yeah, and it's the most exciting thing of the Olympics. And you know what? Sorry, I don't want to interrupt you. But the funny thing is, looking at your race, at the superstars races, The funny thing is that because it is the same, you suddenly start understanding narratives of the races. So, for example, you know that Dylan Scott is a very good rower, right? So now after me having that knowledge, I watch the race with a different kind of view at the race because I see, okay, this is happening.

28:36And then I know this guy is really good at the lunges. So watch out. Maybe there's a shift. you know and now you see Dylan doing the world's unbroken where like two years ago he almost broke a leg when he was doing a wall ball right so and now he does it and wins the world championships and you're like you so and this is also the beautiful thing about sports that's like that's like in decathlon where you're like you watch this over a couple of days but you're like oh that that guy's really good in the javelin so watch out for that that whole thing might shift or he's really good at the 1500 at the end you know so that would never apply if the race would always be different right you would never know you would just watch and say let's see what happens and who wins which is also okay but that's not how for me a sport works you know i'm watching a triathlon and i know this guy is a really good runner so it's really interesting to see the tactics how the other guy tries to get away on the bike in order to get enough seconds in between them because he knows he will be probably like 25 seconds faster on the run so all these narratives they only exist if you have a sport that is the same where people can train forward you know exactly where their strengths are weaknesses and i think that's exciting enough uh for us to to for sure and i think uh a lot of people don't like change and you you'll know that by the the slight rule changes you've done or whatever like yeah any anything that does change like those complaints whether it is even like changing the turf for example of course and everything like there's always uh a lot of complaints before then people realize oh yes it is actually better and you are improving but that first like bit of change um but i think that's where high rocks as a sport has probably kind of capitalized on, say, for example, the people that may like CrossFit from the outside, but they're not confidence levels.

30:30But for example, if I'm training for a competition, I'd feel so much more confident if I knew the workouts. If you don't know the workouts, then you've got that element of, I might get embarrassed on the actual race day, because you're not prepared. You're not fully prepared. Some people thrive off that, like not knowing, but a lot of people, probably the majority of people like to know what they're going in for. That's why people revise for tests. That's why people, they don't like uncertainty and they don't like surprises. And I think that's where High Rocks is really like capitalized because you know exactly what you're going in for.

31:11Yeah. And it's trainable and you can train for every and you can be as prepared as possible for a high rocks on the day. Yeah, but then again, there's room for both. And I think you see that we will have two, maybe more million people doing high rocks in 2026. So you see that apparently everything you just said is correct because a lot of people love to know what they are, what's up, what's happening, right? But there's also hundreds of thousands of people that love the other challenge where you are surprised by what's coming at you. and there's room for both. I keep saying this for High Rocks at the moment.

31:49We don't consider any of these other events or competitions or whatever competition because and not because we're cocky and we're saying that they are not good and nobody will ever do them. And then no, because it would only be a competition if they would be on the very same day as our event in one particular city because then of course people would have to choose where do they go. Hopefully they would go to High Rocks but you don't know so but if there's an event in london in march that does a similar thing than we do and then we have our london event in november what's the point why why should people not sign up for both and then get into the funnel and maybe they heard of this this other event before and they're trying out this and then they like hybrid racing the sport that we're trying to define and if they then hear about it hopefully hyrox is a really cool product that they will also try and maybe they stick then to the product because it's a hopefully better product but i'm a little bit tired of this conversation there's there's you can do various things it's about sports it's about getting people to you know exercise to do things to why bother spending so much time comparing high rocks to whatever other great sport or methodology or training methodology let's just do sports and do whatever you feel is good for you and and i i don't really understand the discussions about there's we don't have to judge we don't need to be better or worse let's just coexist with everyone else just like with tennis and football and high rocks is just one of the it's a new kid on the block but it's just one of those things that people love to do so i'm sometimes a little bit surprised by the overall conversation that yeah like like the typical one like it's like a sport versus hierarchs or like which is better which is this who cares like everyone like i think the the fundamental goal is what you said there is we get as many people into fitness as possible exactly and everyone's going to help everyone you can do a crossfit competition one weekend you can do a hierarchs competition a couple of months later go into ironman go into triathlon whatever it is it's not like you need to do hierarchs the rest of your life and that's it no of course and if you hate that hyrox is always the same then don't do it and do something else but leave us alone no no and it's it is it is crazy um i want to i want to touch on like how like hyrox has progressed so uh your first ever event where was it it was 2017 right the 2018 yeah so we need to get that straight so that it's no 2017 we had our very first we called it test event it was actually called q rocks okay so it was a different name uh it was a not so good name but um we we there we thought about by the way i know maybe we can solve this once and for all the naming stuff oh yes please come with it because i know a lot of people yeah yeah so look the real the the 100 true honest answer is we called it q rocks because we We were thinking, and I didn't have Latin in school, but apparently curare, curere means like healing, running, something like that.

35:09So we thought, okay, see you. And then we really liked the rocks, and that part is true because we were thinking about the term rock star. We want to call our finishers at the beginning rock stars, which we are both very aware we shouldn't say from a branding perspective, which at that point they weren't a partner yet, so we didn't think about that. which is why we got rid of that term after all. So we started with that thought. So we called it Q-Rocks. Then we got sued before the first event, five days before the first event, by a company that has a phonetically similar name. It's not spelled the same, but phonetically it sounds similar.

35:49So we got sued. We had three days to shut everything down. We were then allowed by the court to use the name for the first event because it was literally a few days before the event, but we were not allowed to ever use it again. So here's the reason why it's called High Rocks. We went through a global legal process trying to find a name that is protectable across the globe in all markets where we can keep the rocks and we just added two letters that are protectable. That is the very boring legal answer because we looked at all the letters and we were like, okay, it had to be five letters. We were sure about that because we wanted two syllables and if you have the rocks at the end with more letters, it becomes very difficult to have more than two syllables.

36:43Also, we realized that Q-Rocks was very difficult because in China, they didn't say Q-Rocks. In France, they didn't say Q-Rocks. In Germany, actually, they didn't say Q-Rocks. They said Q-Rocks, so different pronunciation. And so we thought, okay, it needs to be pronounced in a similar way everywhere in the world. You need to be able to read it so that the letters work in all countries. We need to double check that it doesn't mean something stupid in some countries, you know, that you don't have on the radar. So it was a very long, intense legal process because we didn't want to get sued again.

37:16And after all, we liked the combination with the Y. So we found the Y as the first letter in addition to the rocks. and then we did the legal process with K, T, B, P, H. We took basically 12 of the letters and did a legal test what works and Hyrox was the one that came out with the highest percentage of not being able to be sued again. So that is the answer. You definitely learn from your mistakes. Oh, 100%. I think it's, like you say, it's a great name. I think it's incredible. Very happy with the name. Yeah, yeah, yeah. it's um yeah a lot of people do first who've never heard of high rocks or do think that we're rock climbers do you ever get that oh true it makes sense actually yeah yeah and you know yeah that high rocks yeah that makes sense yeah they're like oh do you do you do some rock climbing but um no it's it's incredible but like like you say worldwide now like i think uh it's becoming more and more like i don't know what percentage of people have heard of high rocks but i'd say probably 80 % of people probably hopefully hopefully but uh yeah no it's um it it's interesting because obviously a lot of people ask about the name don't they yeah yeah I've seen I've seen the social the social posts about it it definitely has nothing to do with hybrid rock stars so much I can tell you so that that was your first event and now you've scaled where as of recent you've had New York City where 50 ,000 people competed.

38:49Yeah. That is incredible. So you went from how many people competing at the first event? 650, 650, 650 people to 50 ,000. That's some journey. Yeah. And look, the funny thing is that, I mean, we have a lot of, a lot of challenges, right? In regards to to that i mean people i and and look i understand that totally because if we are telling people that this is supposed to be their sport then we have to provide tickets for people to do their sport because if i play i love to play tennis if i can't book a court i will eventually stop playing because why bother what's the point right if i can't play then that's not my sport anymore so we need to provide that but but and and this is with a lot of things people don't fully understand the bigger picture that we have to look at and that we are looking at right they are complaining and i totally understand that you don't get a ticket you're complaining and i and and i'm not saying they're wrong but new york is a good example we had 15 15 000 athletes in 2025 in New York City same venue so and this is how things work for us right so we sit in our offices and we're like okay 15 ,000 that was a great we sold it out very quickly so let's provide more tickets so we're like okay what do we do okay let's go 30 ,000 and then you already have a couple of people in the office that go are you crazy that we can't offer like twice as many that we will never sell that out that's ridiculous why are you so cocky suddenly be humble let's you know so we have these discussions and then we end up and christian myself and we go okay look we offer 35 it's okay if it's not sold out because then at least people have a chance to get a ticket so great we offer 35 000 tickets we sell out in six minutes we're like okay um let's add three more days now and put it back up so we ask the venue we call them up can we book the venue for one more weekend or can we get so we have 10 days we have 10 days right so we like okay we want to add more days can we do yeah okay so you negotiate you add days so now we have saturday till we had 10 days so we had no monday till i don't know you know yeah you can do the math so we have weekends and a week.

41:14Two weekends, exactly. So we have 10 days and we open the other 10, 15 ,000 tickets, sell them out in six minutes. We're like, okay, we can't do this again. We can't add another week. This is too much. We need to stop now. Apart from the fact that this was already then, obviously, a little bit later and also venue negotiations, you have 15 other events going on. So we got, okay, 50 ,000. this is i mean it's crazy that's okay let's do this now then you go to new york and you see we could have probably sold 80 000 tickets because the waiting list was like 21 000 people and um now i understand those 21 000 people they're like oh this is so stupid why why are there not more tickets and they should offer more tickets and i don't disagree but if we already raised it from 15 to 50 so three more than three x and it's still not enough and you know i understand the frustration but at the same time i i really think people don't fully understand the logistics behind that and how we are providing that because in the end we do business decisions decisions and we are looking like okay how much should we add and can we add and and yeah we have to get better at that because apparently in some markets you know this is just exploding so we want to provide more tickets but it's not that simple on a daily operational scale and so our job is that as long as we're in the hyper growth also right it's so many more people coming in it's very difficult to keep up with that amount of demand um but we have to get better at that and the ratio needs to be in regards to demand and supply needs to probably it's currently like 8x so eight times the demand in regards to the supply we have and we have to get a number down to like three four x which is still scarcity but it is it's providing more more tickets to the public and that's definitely something we have to work on and you just mentioned that there is um an importance to have a bit of scarcity as well though you you want them tickets to to sell like you look at anything across the globe that does well whether it's um your supreme for example with their drops like they limit their drops every brand's doing it now because it creates scarcity um and that's within clothing Then you've got big comedians selling out tours or whatever, or musicians, and they're all creating scarcity.

43:41They're not just adding more and more and more dates. Because there is an importance to that. It kind of keeps the buzz and energy. But it's a fine line. I don't know. Exactly. It's really cool. But like, I don't, it'd be hard to, for anyone that has the business knowledge to say that you're doing anything wrong. I think you're doing all the right things in my opinion. And I don't have much business knowledge at all. But people always say, they always say, oh, like, what would you change about High Rocks if you could change anything? And I'm like, it is the perfect event. I could not, like, you guys are doing everything right in my opinion.

44:26like uh like yes uh there's people that are saying you know apparently and we'll move on to it like like you know potentially judging is a bit harsh or whatever but like would you rather have it be relaxed no you wouldn't because then like it's it's cheating people are cheating like you need it tough you need the yeah and and yes some some penalties might be unfairly given but that's the price that you pay for a great great judging and and you know having them high standards like that there is going to be people that are like, oh, well, they didn't do anything wrong. But if you actually look at it, it's like they did.

45:01It's just probably not noticeable to the eye. Yeah, look, first of all, I appreciate that. I do think we have a lot of things to work on still. And, you know, but then again, also,

45:17people obviously don't know that. And that's fine. And we're absolutely aware of that. But we discuss everything. We see all the comments. We have teams that are only there to globally look through the internet, watching the comments, understanding what are the things that people currently discuss the most. And then we filter, of course. A lot is like, okay, we don't care. And a lot is, okay, what is that? And then we have agendas and then we have our leadership team from sports and all, and we have meetings on these points. and then our teams pitch and like, you know, these are the most discussed topics at the moment.

45:57Then we say, okay, let's look into that. What are the, what's the narrative? What are they saying? What's our thought? You know, so we, there's a lot going on. It's, it's really not, so we care about every single point of that. We might have a different opinion from a global scale in comparison to what individual approaches and subjective opinions are sometimes, but we also have input where we're like, that's actually true. That's great. And I'll give you a very simple example was last year we uh there was a big fuss about the fact that we had the age group 60 uh racing on on the same day in singles then in doubles at the world champs which we announced it was a mistake we overlooked that we wanted we worked on the schedule and we were okay this fix you know it's not it's not very simple to fix the schedule for world champs like this so we just didn't see that point and we published it and suddenly everyone was going crazy and we're like okay okay now we have to relax it was a mistake we have to change it back for sure but we need to work on communication so it took two three days everybody was throwing everything at us and so there we do mistakes and quite frankly probably a lot and then we realize and then we have to change it again that's you know everybody that's that's very human and with these all these judges decisions and what the rules are and what the plan i mean we founded we invented the sport it's not like that's happening for 50 years and there are 50 precedences of how the things should be done right so we are still every day i mean i had a call this morning for one and a half hours with our sports experts team about what for next season to adjust because we will on wednesday announce the new rule book and the new changes so we discussed for one and a half hours what are the slight tiny pieces that where we're not perfect yet so for example we will we will implement from next season for the elite racing the audio feed of the judges because we believe it's really important i mean you you can tell but the public doesn't know how much they actually also communicate during the race right and trying to because it's always this narrative that it's only like about the one decision that goes but if i'm on the radio during the race the amount of decisions that we make in a race is probably exceeding 100 there are 100 decisions in an elite 15 race because there are tiny things people see and then we're questioning it we give it to the vir vir a r and then they give us feedback they send us the clips on the phone we look at it we may okay take it away you know there's so much going on that people don't know and i think it would be highly interesting for people to understand what kind of communication is happening in the back of the decisions after all and then the most important part that's sports you watch a world cup game of the football world cup right now and you have like a whole country discussing the next day about whether that was a hand play or not offside not you know you will never get rid of that in sports where i agree is you have to have the highest potential possible quality of umpires judges 100 and we are very very much working on that we're maybe not there yet but and that's why you will always discuss questions.

49:18But I think we have a very high standard. And individually, subjectively, people might sometimes disagree with decisions, and I can't change that. But you will never get to a point where everything is either a one or a zero. It will always be situations that are gray zone and that might seem hard or not hard. Someone makes sports exciting. It's sports. A lot of people say, like with the with VAR within football yeah there's half the people are saying oh I wish it didn't come into play yeah because it's made the sport more boring or like there's there's no like you know they can go back on decisions and stuff like that and obviously like say you want to do the best at the time but it kind of if if something's being assessed to the every like the finest detail every single time like does it just not make it dry like to watch like you know Say, for example, you have a full race, and then, for example, 48 hours later, the scores change completely.

50:22That's not exciting, is it? No. It should be in the moment, and I think you guys do the best job. I've been out on that elite field, and the judges, I didn't realize how much effort you put in and how much effort they put into the judges. I went to the judge, and this is what you've set up for the Elite 15. So we have the luxury as an Elite 15 athlete. We can go and we have specified judges and we can go meet them beforehand. And I was speaking, I think it was Jonah, one of the judges, and she said, I've been analyzing, I've analyzed every single race you and James Kelly have done this year. I've watched back your races.

51:07I know how you move. I know where your potential penalties are going to lie do you want to go through anything so we went through burpees we went through ball balls and we're like is this a good depth and she was like no you need to go a little bit lower and and she was kind of calling us out for our movement standards and don't get like it's great obviously age groupers yes you might not be able to have that extent but for the elite 15 like it's such an amazing thing that we can um like you're putting uh that level into of effort and and and that's like across the board and uh it's the least that we can do is abide by them standards and and actually get by it so and you and you can still disagree at times yeah but that's also what it is yeah but uh and even when you're out on the Of course, like you said, the communication between you and the judges, like they're so, yes, they might be giving warnings or whatever, but they're never aggressive.

52:10They want you to succeed. And they want to have a good race. And they want, like they're saying, like keep it clean. But yeah, and they're just fair. I hope so, at least. Yeah, no, it's generally, it's been incredible. and like I say all these people have such a passion for the sport as well. For sure. They travel around the world to in the end get screamed at after an Elite 15 race because of a decision that might or might not be correct, most likely is correct. So that's also a lot of dedication. Yeah, and obviously these won't let, but they're not trying to catch people out. They're not trying to do anything.

52:50But it's like, again, allude back to any referee within football. The referee is always the bad guy. Yeah. Unfortunately, that's just, is it? Because if you give a decision one way, then someone else is looking at it thinking, oh, it's against that team or whatever. So they're the bad guy, even if they've made the right call. No, I agree. And look, what we are talking about right now a lot is I would like to have a little bit more visibility, but also, you know, taking on the responsibility of these decisions. because again just from my my professional career i always really loved the fact that if when a referee after the game in my case stood in front of the camera saying look this particular decision that might have decided that game that was my angle i saw it this way now i saw the video i might have been wrong but from the position where i was standing it really looked like this that I would in my entire life never had said, are you still a...

53:52I would have said, okay, fair enough. Great that you took the responsibility that you explain yourself in that way. No harm, ever. The one thing that I always hated about umpires or referees is when they would just stubbornly stick to their decision, although in a video everybody would see it was wrong, you know, black and white decisions. then I'm like okay come on dude I mean what's the point why not say that what you what we all see but and this is the same in our in our in our sport here now high rocks if you have if someone if there's a decision and that's something to discuss after I I want our judges also to be very transparent about what they saw and be able to explain that and maybe either in a one-to-one conversation or even in front of the media saying this is exactly what I saw this is how I judged it if you see that differently then then I apologize but that's not how I saw the situation and I don't think that any of you guys would then say well you bastard you did this on you know it's everyone's human in the end and maybe they did a mistake maybe you did a mistake in your race it's all in the end about a fair competition yeah no and i i think you're doing the best job um talking of a fair competition i think it's incredible that you've uh obviously since i think neice you've been drug testing yeah within uh the elite field uh and it's incredible um i know a lot of people don't really know the ins and outs of the extents that you go with the drug testing um that you know a lot of people say oh like did they get tested did they not would you just be able to explain like the system at the moment yeah yeah so first of all that was really a very important point for me um i mean for us but especially for me personally i mean i was for 15 years tested every six week weeks uh wherever i were in the world um due to the We have people that I was in from VADA.

55:59And so I know everything about this. I was tested on 1500 meter height in a skiing holiday in a bathroom and during university in front of 500 people where the professor literally said, is there Mr. Firsty? You need to go to the toilet now. And so I had to get up in front of everyone. And so, yeah, that was my life. Right. So I knew all about it. And I consider this the most important thing about sports, that we can be role models for kids, that we can show that clean sport is what it's all about. And I know that's a big, tough fight because unfortunately there are more components to sports in the world than just the maybe naive, romantic way how I think about it.

56:52And that's fine. it's not but that's what it is and we have to accept the fact that people are cheating in different ways and taking drugs or performance enhancing things is cheating and so I wanted to get that out of the sport as early as possible because and we have to accept that fact high rocks and hybrid racing itself is a sport where cheating in a pd from a pd perspective is likely because it helps. If someone takes something, it can help your performance. And that is not with all sports. Of course, you can take APO in football as well, but does it make you a better football player after all?

57:39Probably not. You have more endurance, but it will not make you a better passer. or you know so it's still possible but it's not as likely as in the endurance sports that we are working in here like running cycling hybrid racing and so in order to get that kind of off the table we invested as you said from knees on privately into into drug testing all you guys in the elite field at least at all races that's where we started to have that because we said okay then at least we have like three four five tests a year of the top guys i think we started with the top five or three plus two random or something like that yeah so so that's how it is yeah yeah yeah three so top three podium plus two randomly picked ones and it can be it can be randomly picked or if you suspect something or if someone suspects something then you you have the right to test anyone in the field yeah call them out yeah and and be tested and uh so we started that implement that so that there is a consistency in regards to that to a certain degree and now we also added that everybody who holds a license for elite being a professional, high rocks athlete, elite athlete so everybody who acquired a license also signs the waiver that they are up to potential testing at a random event that they are racing in order to qualify or get points for the new point based system so I think that is also a next step that you are going to a race wherever you go, you might be tested.

59:15You might not. And of course we will grow there again to have more people tested all the time. But yeah, that's the next step. Yeah, and I've received that. Both within the Elite 15 and outside of the Elite 15, I've been called and I've been tested in both instances where it's just a generic race. And they want to test me. And I think it's incredible. genuinely like uh i think i've probably been tested so probably six seven times in the last uh year i'd probably say and and it's great um my question would be do you think it's going to get to the level of like whereabouts testing and like you say um where it's out of competition testing because, again, people, I suppose people, if they took a big enough off-season, they could potentially use performance-enhancing drugs within their off-season and then use something to, like, you know, come off them and then still have the gains or benefits for them going into competition.

1:00:25Yeah. The answer is yes. Okay. So it will get to that point, especially with i mean all the talks about our aspirations becoming a real olympic like integration into the olympics and stuff um once we once we partner up with world triathlon which is the i i guess the the not a rumor it's a i said this many times um we will also fall under the policies and everything of the triathlon federation so all whereabout testing will be implemented from that point on for not everyone there are different pools right there's the there's the the top pool and then the the pool below that so the top pool would be really well about testing i mean for 10 years i had to explain 30 days and 90 days in advance where i'm going to be at every hour of the next three months and if something changed i would have to change that on the spot because if they couldn't find me for like two hours it's a missed test and and you're in trouble already um which was took a big part of my life uh doing that doing that agenda setting in the calendar um that will happen uh i can promise that yes yeah that's uh that's great and i think that's the in my opinion that that's the next step that um just just keeps the the spot as far as possible for sure yeah yeah i'm excited it's uh it's gonna be good um yeah because um like you said the level is just getting better and better and better for sure and it's it's incredible and when you see the amount of money coming into the sport from sponsors and stuff like that people can literally one make a living like a really good living but could could potentially change their life so yeah there's always a risk when there is money involved because people will potentially try and open and try I don't think it's going to be a few years.

1:02:28Sooner than that? Yeah. Yeah, sooner than that. So I think we're more looking over the next 12 to 18 months to fully have that implemented. I mean, I can't promise it. It's a lot of bureaucracy behind that. but um we're trying to get there asap yeah yeah yeah um yeah moving on to uh like let's say uh evolving obviously this world champs has been one of the most incredible experiences that i've seen like you you go to the airport you're like you land here in stockholm in the airport it's all high rocks the whole city it feels like you know there's there's competitor brands that there's brands of like that that support high rocks and are partners with high rocks but then there's other brands as well trying to get in there and it's all around it's kind of like a big buzz in stockholm at the moment which you know it's incredible uh to see um moving kind of like to next year do you do potentially obviously you want to scale even more right is uh is there any obviously there's potential room well there's talks of the cruise for the first um and everything else what uh what's going on there so the cruise or next year's world chancellor in general yeah in general so so the cruise the elites will be racing on the cruise yeah yeah yeah yeah so on the cruise and i've seen a lot of a lot of content around that as well and it's it's all not wrong right so we are thinking in general a lot about new kind of things or events or training camps or whatever how to make more out of the 365 days that people are now consuming high rocks in different ways right and um and the cruise was like a we have a friend in in where we are from hamburg who founded the biggest heavy metal festival in the world called wachen uh hundreds of thousands of people every year travel to this really small village close to hamburg for the biggest um uh heavy metal festival in the world which is random right and odd and they started organizing a heavy metal cruise 10 years ago i think and he always kept telling us that this is such a it's unbelievable and only all these heavy metal fans are going on there and we were like we have such a community that loves hanging out together so um let's let's also try that right and so we did and uh i think we were not smart enough at the beginning to really implement that product into the world of high rocks we just put it on top of it we had a terrible pricing strategy at the beginning um we were a little bit too much in the comfort of oh every tickets are selling so well so um this will also have the exact same you know uh impact and then we didn't fully think it through that it's a four-day cruise you have to fly to spain you have to go from there and for it we we didn't do the things in a perfect way so at the time we then thought about okay how can we make this more exciting how can we get the community on board that is that is actually that we want there also and that makes this this an experience literally and so the idea of having the elite race on board because it has the like a really amazing setup of on top with like a run track and a stadium where where the finals the workouts can be and stuff and so we started thinking about it and it's not entirely wrong that we did this also in order to make the cruise an even better experience for everyone to potentially join but it was not the only reason and we really thought it was crazy exciting to have a race in a harbor with a drone flying over a cruise ship and then creating those pictures um is it the perfect setup for for like what we're developing for the elite race probably not but it's a new exciting aspect of it and i don't think you it will be a downside for the athletes to have a four-day cruise and have a couple of races on on a boat i'm i'm genuinely like excited about it and i think like a lot of people that again they don't like change and obviously racing in a completely new setting maybe uh some things that might feel a little bit different and things like that like people aren't going to take to it straight away but i think it'll be one of them things we'll do it and we'll look back and it'll be like ah that was pretty cool i'm pretty convinced of that yeah it'd be definitely be a memory for life not being able to compete at the in the elite 15 on a cruise so so yeah it's gonna be uh it's gonna be fun i think it's gonna be cool yeah um and then uh next year obviously um london's been announced and then the world at this moment in time the the world champs yeah has been announced hong kong hong kong which She's going to be.

1:07:18I've never been. It's crazy. But yeah. And it's the first time we really have, I mean, also for maybe your listener, the listeners to understand, it's the first time we really have full government support from a city where we host a world champs. So will we notice like even more, like say Stockholm's buzzing at the moment, but will it be a lot different? It will be madness in comparison to this. The whole city's behind it. All government travel, tourism boards, everything uh they are pitching us ideas about branding and they're all here for the entire time they're still here they watched every single minute of all the races they love it they are thinking creatively about how to engage i mean just you know suddenly they are talking to all the local embassies to host country nights in hong kong i mean imagine you flying to the world championships in Hong Kong and you have a reception at the British embassy there.

1:08:17I mean, that's crazy, right? And these are all things that it's just, you know, with the sport growing, it gets more attention and more people are thinking about it. And I mean, by the way, to me, that's a must have. If I was the ambassador of the UK or England in that sense in Hong Kong and I have 800 fellow countrymen, women flying in, i have a reception for them that's my fucking job right yeah to take care of my of my people so but we never thought about this before so this starts now that we're like okay why not putting all the people that travel from one country into one hotel like in the olympics that's amazing why not just block the rooms and sell it just offer it just to the people from the country so we have a house where all english people all french people i don't know you know so there are so many new ideas that are coming into from piggybacking from all these things that are happening here right now it's it's great that um like you say people because i feel like people think high rocks is it's like business and but i i love how everyone's working together and like you say people are starting to work with you guys now instead of just thinking because i assume when you first started uh every single venue like you've got to like you say you've got to negotiate you've got to you've got to pitch all the time you're pitching pitching like high rocks trust me it's going to be incredible it's going to be incredible and now it's got to the level where like people are wanting high rocks at the places and people and that must be so like i don't know just such as makes my job easier yeah it makes your job easy but like just a a sense of achievement that uh makes you happy and proud no of course look you know i i said this a few times um also to our team this weekend.

1:10:06So there are two important things that I want to say to that. First of all, doing what we do is a little bit, so we feel a little bit about it like when you're raising kids, right? If you see them every day, you don't see them growing 0.1 inch every day or whatever, right? You don't see that. You're like, oh, you see them every day. The progress is not so visible. you have to if you're if you're seeing whatever if i see my niece that i see every six months i'm like how did that happen she was like you know so you see the difference and this is this is how i try to explain to our team also that it's important to sometimes take a step back and have try to get a meta view on things and see like guys humble look at the progress it's amazing because we are so caught in the operational parts behind that that sometimes you lose that connection to also breathing in, take a step back and be humble and happy with the progress that we're making while always looking for the mistakes and trying to get better every day like you athletes are trying to get better every day.

1:11:18But the second thing is, yes, we are a commercial operation. We do things. We have a lot of employees. We pay them. We pay the venues. We do make money and the tickets are not cheap and so on and so forth. But we are commercially driven in a sense that we know that we can only be commercially successful if we deliver the best product, sport that is possible. So all our efforts are always going into the product and the sport because if we lose that connection, then we will never be successful commercially either. and I read a lot of posts about especially these days about yeah the tickets are going to be so expensive because maybe that investor is coming or whatever rumors they are I could raise the price by 50 bucks right now I would still sell every single ticket for a year probably and you can do the math if I raised the 1.5 million participants I raised the ticket by 50 bucks that's a lot of money I would never do that we would never raise we will always we are at a good price point we will see price rises in some markets depending on the market you will not see you will not see what i just said raising the prices for the sake of raising the prices you will not see that we there is no need for us to do that we already have a very high demand of the tickets we're very happy with the price point where we are we actually even decided for next year's world championships we will not raise the price we will keep it exactly on the level where it is right now because there's that's not the point how we want to maximize i don't know revenues you know we have a lot of other things that we focus on we want to have a better commercial digital product for the life races we want to sell the the media rights at one point and have make this incredible sport globally visible on all the platforms that are out there these are things we're working on um we work on sponsorships because um with the hyper growth it's very difficult to have a good sponsorship contract for us because every six months later the sponsorship contract that we signed isn't a bad one because you know the growth was so high so we're trying to get better there but And of course, we will also still, there are inflation reasons and whatnot, there will be price increases to a certain extent.

1:13:28But that's not how we look at things. That's not where we want to maximize our success commercially. I'd agree. I think it's a great price point because you've also, if you went too cheap, I always think it back to, I used to be a personal trainer. And if your prices are too cheap, people don't value it. people don't uh they don't train hard enough they don't if i always remember people who i'd give a free program to would never stick to it even but if you charge them because they're paying their money they're going to train for it they're going to do that they're going to take it seriously and they're going to get better results because of that and it's going to be more rewarded and fulfilling and and and that's how i kind of like see it when it it comes to it but like i say i think it's um like it's enough obviously they're expensive tickets are expensive but they could be more expensive like you said um but uh it's it's yeah it's right in my opinion um yeah no it's uh it's really really really cool um you just touched then on like you said at the moment live streams are on youtube yeah um and you said you want it across different media platforms potentially are somewhere bigger um is the where where is that going yeah i know it's hard to say right now because i know you've had people almost like scouts come in watching uh yeah a lot jumps yeah a lot of yeah yeah no look let's let me say that the fantastic thing is that the same logic that you mentioned earlier correctly about like the cities everybody cares now so all the big media platforms ott's channels they care they see it they think it's cool they look at it and they start considering taking it on having a conversation with us at least and um i can't i can't really say anything else that apart from the fact that that's happening and it will we will see a lot of development and progress in the media production over the next two years as well um and then that that's kind of like live streams and then i know uh red bull did a bit of like a series yeah and things is the potential with that as well like uh say like a drive to survive or the last dance kind of yeah you will i mean again i would love to to tell you more but there are there are quite a few very interesting entertainment driven formats coming up very soon yeah which which is a win for for everyone i think it is going to obviously help the brand have more visibility but it's also going to help every athlete for sure is that it's going to inspire a lot more people um a lot more people are going to be able to learn and get better themselves i think let's say it's just a win for everyone which is really cool and i'm excited um do you think that the format of high rocks where everyone is individual so say for example you've got uh the elite 15 and everyone uh is racing for themselves do you think that will always stay the same and say for example uh like in cycling you've got teams yeah yeah do you do you think um everything will be still like individual and you'll or do you think i well it's not planned to change anything right now yep but i also do like the idea of teams in a certain sense um even with my sporting background the one thing i appreciate actually even in high rocks i love racing doubles just for the sake of so much better let's like honestly i think it's so for me personally it's so much better you have a better time you have you have someone to share the load workload with you you know um you can strategize if you if you do bad then you kind of laugh about it together if you if you win then you you have someone to celebrate with exactly and that's that's what i always kept saying as a team sport athlete that when we won a game i had 16 guys being as happy as i was which is a great thing to have yeah and no but i like the team aspect um there are a few ideas floating around um it's definitely not something that is currently planned but we're strategizing a lot with also our partners and with with a few other people um looking at a few other concepts from other sports um formula one uh say gp uh uh even even cricket uh so we look at a lot of things and um yeah i i i wouldn't say it's with i i can't and i don't want to say and i i it's not it wouldn't be the truth to say we're planning to do this now soon but we're definitely looking into it and um and uh and potentially that could could come up yeah yeah no i think i say it's an evolving sport and i think you guys are making it um the best with the knowledge that you guys have at the time and whatever comes i think you'll make the correct decisions uh you seem to have made it this far like let's say the just in recent years so say for example i remember um nice was the first time that you were testing the wall ball targets yeah and I remember speaking to the guy that's that designed he was like yeah I've been working on this for the last six months in my basement and he was trying to come up with the issue of obviously the judging is very hard for wall balls like it's very very hard but if you can like you say have a target where you hit or not it's black and white it's there and I remember the first couple of times that people are all these sensors are awful these are but you've persisted with them and now they're perfect like nobody says anything about the sensors like they're the they're the best thing that's happened and even like with this season uh the upgrade and i think as of next season everyone's going to get the go the green goal so it gets hits it exactly it's 99 and then it's go 100 so you know that you've done your 100 reps and then you go there's no kind of um there's no deviation there which i think but that was like one thing that there were so many posts online that were like is it good is it bad that these sensors are coming in like i don't like these sensors i hate these sensors um and you just kept on pushing because you you knew it's the right thing and now and it's same with like the turf for example like the center turf is great it's as it's almost as good as like it could be like with obviously we know so many different factors with the turf that's uh you know the sled lanes or whatever the humidity at the there's so many different things that uh the turf underneath like you're in expo halls or whatever like you can't determine what the surface is like underneath the the so so everything the sleds are going to move differently but i think they're the most consistent they've been yeah and and look we are really putting a lot of effort and even optimizing that because the one thing is the turf what we're working on right now is the sled because it's not only the turf that defines potentially what you're just saying how it's moving it's also the sled if it's a very used sled it's usually much more difficult to yeah i think hunter did a video i think he got yeah so he did a video where i think he had like an old center sled and then he had uh he got a brand new one like given and uh he was just literally physically like just pushing it with no weights on and one moved a lot further than the other and obviously like uh you could just see there was a clear difference but um no and and look again we we're working on these things we see it's not like we don't see that um but people don't realize so for example you swap everything like meticulously when it's every venue especially for the elite 15 so say for example uh the the sled or the ski ergs or whatever they're all moved yeah yeah every single one so like it's not like number one lane number one is the same slide every time like everything's exactly even we go through all the sleds but and and check if try to get them on a consistent level especially for elites right yeah try to get them on consistent level and no but i think there are ways and we found one that we are going to implement very soon that we can get the sled conversation out of the game, not the turf.

1:22:29The turf conversation will always be there to a certain degree, but I think it's also fair to say that if we can solve what you – I haven't seen the video, but if we can solve that issue – Yeah, the friction of old slides versus newer slides. Then we're already a big step further, right? Yeah. And so I think we have the solution for that. that we will announce very soon for the upcoming season. There is also nothing that is completely off the charts. I've seen that particular, what our solution now is, that particular suggestion. I've seen that in many comments in the past, but it just takes time to establish that to a level.

1:23:10As you said before, the warboard targets, we don't want to do the mistake again to have something that then takes two years to fully work. And people forget that we have 1.5 million participants. So it's not like, oh, yeah, let's change something quickly. It doesn't work like that anymore, right? The scale is so big that we need to consider all options and look at it from different angles. But I think we get there. And again, nobody in our company, I sometimes just have to protect our team because they also read all these comments and they also see everything. And Matt McWilliams, who worked on the Warbow targets that you were mentioning earlier, he uh i mean it is you know how it is human it is frustrating if he's working his butt off for eight months and then it doesn't work perfectly and he's upset himself and then the whole social media world gets basically mad at him and then i have to tell him to not look at that and focus and that we will get there you know and the same with these other conversations we have a full team working on that stuff and sometimes sometimes the comments are not fair and that's why but that's also what it is it's our responsibility we fully take all credit credit for the positive things and the responsibility for the negative things and we want to get better every day we have people working on that stuff every single day we don't get everything right at the right from the start but we're trying to improve we have a lot of internal conversations about all these things and if if a sled isn't moving at an event and they're you know someone's freaking out that being on social media or not you can believe me that our team is the one that is that is the most upset about that yeah i want to finish with uh you touched on it before but aspirations to be in the olympics where is the current situation and talks with that yeah yeah so um hybrid racing which is really important for me to explain why i keep talking about hybrid racing so much because hybrid racing is how i define the umbrella the the sport to me that's the sport of all these different whatever running and function fitness competitions races that are now out there and hyrox is what i we consider the ultimate hybrid racing discipline okay that's high rocks and then there's maybe a shorter version or longer version or ultra version of whatever four runs and 12 workouts or the other way around but that's all under the umbrella of hybrid racing and um and hybrid racing will be an olympic sport you can nail me down on that sentence is it going to be 32 probably i don't know 36 40 yeah for sure yeah so that's how i feel about it well that's what i think um now we are in our conversations defining the rules and regulations to make high rocks the qualifying layer to get into the hybrid racing olympics and this is basically what we're discussing right now that because the sport in the Olympics will not be called High Rocks.

1:26:22The sport in the Olympics will be called hybrid racing. So it's the hybrid racing Olympic Games, whatever. How you get there? Most likely through the High Rocks event season every four years. And then that gets you in the Olympics. How exactly? I can't tell you yet. It's very complicated. Oh no, and it definitely seems that with obviously we heard last year I remember when you announced it in Chicago. The first time that you aspirations of being in the Olympics. And you were saying that you'd hear by, I think, late 2026, is that correct, if potentially 32 would be on the cards? Is that still? Yeah, January or February 27th.

1:27:03So that's when we're potentially here. If not by then, then we're looking at 2036. Yeah. So right now, that's more important news. right now we're hopefully close to nailing down having a high rocks event at the LA Olympics which is not as part of the Olympic program but during the Olympics we are in negotiations and conversations with the Olympic Committee in the US to host a high rocks event there, public open for registration just a just a normal event at the same time. Would you make it like a major or anything like that? No, we wouldn't be able to do that. It would just be a normal big race, which I still think would be unbelievable.

1:27:56Incredible. In that city during the Olympics, having a high rocks race there. A little bit like Paris, they had the marathon, right? They opened the marathon a day after the actual marathon, I think. So that would be the first direct contact. and then 32 is a big goal. And there are different ways, either through that, what I said, January, February vote that the IOC has, but there's also another opportunity through the national organizing committees to get into that. So a little bit later. What is it? I don't really know. Obviously, you'll know more. What was kind of like the cutoff date to have like all the competitions and sports in the Olympics for certain games?

1:28:37Yeah, I'm not 100 % sure, So that's probably somewhere in the ballpark of mid-27. Yeah. Not much later. Yeah. Yeah. No, that's interesting. I best get my accommodation book for 2028 because I assume it's going to be quite expensive. I can tell you that's probably very expensive. Wise if you want to be there. But no, that's, I think for me, and you mentioned it before, I think that's the pinnacle of any athlete. If you have the opportunity to potentially represent your country, at uh at the games i think uh that would be the ultimate dream in whatever measure that would be um question would it be just the singles or would it be the doubles or would it be like obviously like you say it might not be named hyrox but this hybrid racing would it be more of a team event or would it be a solo or that that is that is hard to determine now because I mean, if you ask me, I would love all the formats that we have in there, singles, doubles, relay.

1:29:41But that's not a decision for me to make. That's further down the road. Once we're in, we discuss the details. Yeah, no. Thank you for today. Absolutely, pleasure. I appreciate it. I think you summed up everything incredible. Yeah, thank you. Thank you so much for having me.