It’s got everything.”Ĭalling the top Spartan athletes world-class is not hyperbole, and it's not far-fetched.

What other sport do you see long-distance endurance, plus strength, agility, balance, dexterity, the mental, and the tactical? There's also a bit of pushing, shoving, and trash talking. It showcases athletic talent in just such a perfect way. “What we’ve created in OCR is highly explosive,' says David James Watson, Spartan's Vice President, Product. Related: The GOATs: These Are the 50 Greatest Spartan Racers of All Time But part of the reason for the decline in interest is the lack of watchability among the sports in the Games. Unlike some of the slower-paced sports featured in the Olympics, Spartan offers action-packed, fierce, in-your-face competition from some of the most well-rounded athletes in the world. There are numerous reasons for this, including some that have absolutely nothing to do with the product on the screen ( cord-cutting and streaming trends, for example). It's no secret that Olympics viewership has fallen in recent years. The Most Well-Rounded Athletes on Every Corner of the Globe Obstacle course racing, with Spartan as the innovator and custodian of the sport, has proven that it belongs on the biggest stage. It's been standardized, refined, and built into a true professional sport, with races timed to the millisecond, some of the best prize money in endurance sports, regulated distances and obstacle layouts, officiating teams, and even drug testing. In a remarkably short period of time, Spartan has turned OCR into a legitimate mass-participation sport with tremendous global appeal and recognition. More than a decade later, there are no longer questions about what Spartan, and the sport of obstacle course racing, is. We can look back on it now and admire it for what it was, but also acknowledge that it was somewhat raw, rough, and immature as it tried to find itself and figure out exactly what it wanted to be.

There were gladiators at the finish line and Roman columns on the grounds. This was the first iteration of Spartan, in its infancy, when founder and CEO Joe De Sena first got it off the ground.

It's weekend entertainment, purely experiential, something to cross off your bucket list while enjoying nature and getting a solid workout in. There are roughly 500 local competitors running, crawling, jumping, and swimming, just having a blast. The setting is the Catamount Outdoor Family Center in Williston, Vermont, less than 9 miles from Burlington.

Professional obstacle coure racer