This is a good primer. The 2017 season is here.
Glancing through the season again, it’s remarkable how so many of these ladies manage to be so amazingly fresh and smooth and clean and conquer big physical challenges. I always thought of it as one or the other.
The obstacle to a American Kuniochi is that they’ve made a big deal about the women competing on the same course and same obstacles as the men. To reverse course on that would turn off some viewers.
I have watched a couple of seasons of “Women of Ninja Warrior” before, and there is a lot more stress on balance obstacles rather than a reliance on upper body strength. One involved a series of panels that required the competitor to step directly in the middle and balance fore/back while moving across a series that got taller and taller, such that smaller and smaller imbalances would cause the panels to fall over.
Michelle Warnky: I love challenges. I love challenging challenges. I always challenge my fellow ninjas to challenge the challenges. It’s a real challenge challenge to challenge challenge challenge challenge. I have no idea who “Stinkoman” is, please stop bringing him up.
Alexi Matousek: I do a lot of work in Haiti, a land desperately in need of reliable medical services which just happens to have lots of cute, wide-eyed kids who like to stare directly into the camera. Funny how that always works out, huh?
Sean Noel: I have celiac disease, so I can’t eat BREAD! I can’t eat CAKE! I can’t eat PASTA! I can’t eat DOUGHNUTS! I can’t eat…uh…BEEF WELLINGTONS! Is it one minute yet, dammit?
Jon Alexis Jr.: ANW is a lot like skydiving in that when you are a short distance from the surface, you don’t want to fall straight down! Umm…crap, maybe I should’ve gone with a “How’s the weather up there?” joke after all…
Jamie Rahn: I have a girlfriend! We’re engaged! We’re going to have a big wedding! See, see, I’m not a loser just because I dress like a superhero and take part in a sport that doesn’t pay anything! I’m not a loser, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not!
Jesse Labreck: I used to dedicated my life to my PATIENT!!!, because there’s no greater calling than to be a caregiver for a PATIENT!!! Now I teach numerous CHILDREN!!! in a gym. Unfortunately I had to leave my PATIENT!!! to be with my BOYFRIEND!!! I love my BOYFRIEND!!! very much. But my PATIENT!!! hit it off with my BOYFRIEND!!!, so I can be with my BOYFRIEND!!! without any guilt and continue being around CHILDREN!!! with my BOYFRIEND!!! No, I don’t mind in the slightest that it’s been two years and absolutely nothing about me has come to light, because it’s a woman’s place to live completely for others! SUCK IT, GRAFF!
Mark Ribiero: My sister’s two daughters have autism, and it’s been a major challenge to…yes, “uncle” is a close enough relation that pointlessly dragging them into this doesn’t qualify as crassly exploitative, shut up!
Allyssa Beird: I am a 5th grade teacher, which is not only a really, really, really super-weird occupation for an ANW competitor, it is vastly weirder than the 50 previous really, really, really, super-weird occupations that have been represented here! Because shut up, that’s why! Also, you should show absolutely no interest in what a teacher wants or needs and just give her a goddam apple every time!
Najee Richardson: When you can’t compete in gymnastics anymore, ANW is the ideal sport to move on to, because it too has extremely limited opportunities, is very easy to get injured in, and pays jack squat! Hey, that almost makes sense!
Drew Dreschel: Yes, I’m one of the most famous ANW competitors of all time, but what’s really important is that my wife had a baby! And has a second on the way, which is even more important, because what kind of loser parents only have one child! I intend to be done with this before my kids get to old to constantly shove in front of the camera!
Damn…I remember when this used to be fun. At first it was good news that Cityfinals forced NBC to abandon sappy, mushy human interest, but now it looks like they’ve simply replaced it with boring human interest. And some of it is just plain pointless. Celiac disease? Really?
Just a couple notes about the actual contest:
Once again there was a massive pileup at a new and very poorly-designed obstacle (I’d be leery about putting that monstrosity at the end of Stage 3, much less the #8 spot in Cityfinals). The most damning thing was that both men who made it past it were able to clear Clacker and Elevator Climb, normally absolute killers, without much trouble. This may have been good for a goofy counter, but I fail to see how this helps the sport. Once everyone knows it’s just a race to the immovable object, all the drama of getting far is lost, much less finishing. I also think that Cityfinals is getting too lengthy and ponderous overall. The qualifying rounds should emphasize speed. Remember how thrilling it was seeing how fast competitors could get through things like Jump Hang, Spinning Log, Devil Steps, and Rope Maze? There are only 15 qualifiers no matter what, so I fail to see the danger of there being “too many finishers”.
Am I the only one getting tired of all the damn screaming? Tonight it seemed like half of each run sounded like a boy band concert. Particularly egregious given the slog that Cityfinals has turned into. It’s like getting super fired up over the first round of a Web.com event.
(Huh…when did everything I talk about this board become so negative? I need to watch more Utauloid videos or something. :))
Morgan Wright: I use money as an incentive for my kids to get into shape. It’s been great so far, so I’ve decided to compete on a reality show where I won’t make a damn penny. Hey, no pain, no gain, all right?
Alex Carson: Tuba! Tuba tuba tuba! Tubatubatubatubatubatubatubatuba! Tuuuuubaaaaa! FINE, I GOT NUTHIN’, SUE ME!
Sara Heesen: My job requires me to carry heavy stuff, therefore I have strong arms, therefore I’m fine with upper-body obstacles, therefore NBC is completely justified in making Cityfinals an upper body-a-rama! Whew…okay, I think that’ll do it…please pay attention to me…
Wes Whitlam: My (sniff) mother meant so much (sniff) to me, and now (sniff) she’s dead. In here honor (sniff), I’m going to pretend that (sniff) she’s helping me get through (sniff) the obstacles somehow…oh, just (sniff) work with it. Which, of course, will (sniff) make it really awkward if I (sniff) go down early, but hey, if those (sniff) stupid college basketball players can (sniff) handwave their way past that, it can’t be that (sniff) hard.
Michael Bougher: HOO RAH! SERVING YOUR COUNTRY! HOO RAH! LIFE ON THE LINE! HOO RAH! TRAINING ! HOO RAH! CAN BE DEPLOYED AT ANY TIME! UNCERTAINTY! HOO RAH! HOO RAH! HOO RAH!
Dan Polizzi: Every time I get through Cityfinals he doesn’t! And every time he gets through Cityfinals, I don’t! But this time I’m sure that we’re both going to make it! This has absolutely no chance of biting us in the butt like a school of sharks!
Mitch Vedepo: Having a long distance relationship is tough. I have no idea who’s saying it’s easy, but whoever it is, dead wrong, man. Fortunately we have a ridiculously difficult once-a-year reality show to bring us together. Life is tough, man.
Maggi Thorne: Last year I went through a divorce (so it’s completely not my fault that I’m single!) and now have to raise my three children alone. But because I’m so resilient, not only did I refuse to let that get me down, I’ve now become one of the premiere ANW competitors. Therefore, if you are a single blah blah blah complete loser and should just kill yada yada you get the drill SUCK IT G…oh, crap, I just remembered she’s going to be watching tonight. Um…uhhhh…WARNKY! Yeah, that’s the ticket!
Brad Spine: I’m the king of ARM WRESTLING, bay-bee! 13 national championships, bay-bee! The upper body monster that is Cityfinals is right up my alley, bay-bee! Yeah, there’s pretty much zero chance of me hitting the buzzer, bay-bee!
Tyler Yamauchi: Hi, I’m going to regale you with a whole bunch of increidbly obvious stuff about parenthood and act like they’re incredibly shocking revelations! Insulting your intelligence or making your really worried about my kids’ future? You decide, America!
Sarah Schoback: My training partner is also named “Sara”! Ha ha ha ha! That never happens! Ha ha ha ha! We’re the best of friends! Ha ha ha ha ha! I tried to teach her my dance moves, but they can’t be taught! Ha ha ha ha ha ha! Yes, that is dancing, shut up! Ha ha ha ha haaaaaa ha ha ha ha, ha ha ha ha ha, AHHHHH HA HA HA HA HA…wait, was it a minute or a minute and a half?
Lance Pekus: Why do I wear jeans and the hat? 'Cause RANCHING, that’s why! Not sure who that’s news to, but hey! And I’m not going to stop wearing the hat! Uh uh, forget it! Not sure who’s clamoring for me to lose the hat, but hey! (Dangit, I gotta get to Stage 3 one of these years…)
I remember when Cityfinals had things like windsurfing and eating lots of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and waiting in line for weeks and unusual jobs. Not the most scintillating vignettes, but at least there was variety. Now it’s like unless you fall into one of the Acceptable Categories, you get some boring 20-second blowoff.
Anyway, the only thing I find interesting right now is NBC’s attitude toward finishing. At first I thought it was a ridiculous black-or-white stance…i.e. zero finishers equals UTTER HORRIFYING DISASTER, while one or two finishers equals WE GOT A FINISHER, YEEEE-HAWWWW!!! Way I see it, if none is a problem, next to none is just another symptom of the same problem, and problem (again) is that the course has just gotten too dang hard. In fact, were it not for Mitch Vedepo barely not having enough stamina and Tyler Yamauchi blundering a dismount, we would’ve had a repeat of Cleveland just last week, and the problem would remain.
And the result is that finishing means jack squat. In Qualifying, at least in the early years, the only way to have peace of mind was to hit the buzzer. In one memorable Denver prelim, 5 out of 6 was truly worthless since a record 48 contestants finished the course. But Cityfinals had no such stress: Even on the “easy” courses, no one who cleared the 8th obstacle ever finished out of the top 15. This week not only was 5 plenty enough, someone who only completed the 4th task make it through. Reportedly there is (a little) prize money for finishing in the top 3 in Cityfinals, but if hardly anyone can make it, that still doesn’t make finishing a big priority.
So the way I see it, NBC has an interesting dilemma on their hands. There’s a limit to what a human body is capable of, and megastars like Drew Dreschel and Joe Moravsky won’t be around forever. If things stay the way they are, there are going to be a lot more nights like Kansas City. So, do they relent and tone down Cityfinals? Do they do a complete revamp, maybe make it shorter and emphasize speed more while still making getting to the end a major challenge? Or…do they decide they actually like One Shining Finisher and try to make that the norm? Say, spread out the stars among the cities and set up obstacles that give them a fighting chance (within the limits of all arms all the time, of course)?
I’ll definitely be following this. What the heck, not much else to follow right now…
Huh? Oh, right, Denver. Here goes…
Ian Weber: I’m a national champion shakerboarder! Yes, that is in fact, a noteworthy accomplishment! It is! It is, it is, it is! IT’LL BE HUGE! JUST YOU WAIT!
Larissa Cottle: Concrete work is great training for ANW because there’s a lot of work with the arms! Boy, you wouldn’t expect a woman to do concrete work! Yes, that is very, very unusual! Also two-year-old daugher suck etc…
Bart Copeland: Concrete work is great training for ANW be…what the hell do you mean you already have one?? Huh…fine, I’ll bring the adoptee into this. Sheesh.
Brandon Todacheenie: Kids these days need to be encouraged to exercise, and the best way to do this is to compete on reality show where I’ll be seen for a few minutes every year, and that’s if I don’t screw up. I hope that someday this makes more sense than being completely invisible in American society.
Jeri D’Aurelio: HOO RAH! CALLING WITNESSES! HOO RAH! CROSS-EXAMINATION! HOO RAH! PRESENTING EVIDENCE TO…look, I passed friggin’ basic, I’m going to thump my extremely military chest, deal with it!
Brian Arnold: Grrrr! I am so angry with The Wedge! I swear, if I don’t get past The Wedge tonight, I’m giving up this crap for good! Okay, I’m 39, barn door, horse bolted, whatever, I am so ticked off at The Wedge!
Lorin Ball: I like to go faaaaaaaast! However, Cityfinals now requires tons of upper body strength! So…uh…so…okay, this sucks.
Dalton Knapp: I’m a great example of what can happen when you don’t give up on a person, when you give all your heart and soul and make the effort, and have the help of modern medical technology and enough blood for 146 transfusions ahh ahh ahh oops my bad HEART SOUL EFFORT HEART SOUL EFFORT!
Matt Dolce: I’m really good with things that have handlebars! And since the fifth obstacle has something that looks kinda like handlebars and I went out on it in qualifying, I’m going to make obsessing with that one obstacle that the sum total of my personality! Reality television really sucks!
Ian Dory: Baby daughter! Baby daughter baby daughter baby daughter baby daughter!
Meagan Martin: I do modelling! And rock climbing! And training! Ha ha ha ha! That requires a lot of air travel! Ha ha ha ha ha ha! I’m in the airport so much, I should be paying it rent! Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha oh geez just end already how long do you think I can avoid going into the slightest detail about anything??
Yep, never doing this again. Good lord, I seriously feel like I wasted a great deal of time just writing all that nonsense. In fact, I’m pretty much done with the entire bloated spectacle of Cityfinals. So much overcoming and inspiration and coming back and showing the world etc. etc., and NBC seems hellbent on showcasing the most boring cases imaginable. On top of that, the runs now take so long that we’re getting an even smaller cross-section of the field than we did in prior seasons.
I realize that only paying attention to the last four days of the program is going to limit my involvement. Whatever. The real story is Stage 1, where all the feel-good cases and gritty underdogs and dark horses go down in flames, along with plenty of contenders who just had a little slipup somewhere. Uncaring, brutal, and relentless, just like Sasuke is supposed to be.
On a positive note (and you know how I just love those :D), Meagan Martin kicked butt, and if you care at all about this event, that is great news. Martin’s always been one of the strongest competitors, but lately she’s had a string of bad results, including an inexplicable bungle on the trampoline in the last All-Stars event. She seemed to conquer the pressure and get back in the groove in Denver, and it looks like conquering Stage 1 is now within the realm of possibility. Jessie Graff needs a rival, dangit, and it looks like Martin is almost ready to step into the role again.
I agree that city finals were a bit silly this year… but yes, one of the most interesting questions in the ANW world is who the #2 woman is, and how close she is to Jessie Graff.
My money is on Jessie “Flex” LaBreck, but Meagan Martin definitely has a punchers’ chance as well.
One thing having such difficult cityfinals does is it does give us a pretty good short list of truly elite men. I wonder how similar the list of CF finishers will be to the list of stage 2 finishers?
Or is the distinction between your Dreschel/Gill/Moravsky/Dory/Levins and your Arnold/Rosen/Richardson/Rodriguez/Stratises just a matter of luck?
Anyhow, looking forward to Vegas, I’d love to see two things:
(1) Flip Rodriguez finally makes it to stage 3. I’ve been a fan of his forever, and he’s been heartbreakingly close so many times
(2) Someone makes it to stage 4 and then fails to beat stage 4. No point in stage 4 existing if everyone who ever gets there always completes it.
Still pumped for Stage 1, but in the meantime, I thought I’d share this.
Did Eyes seriously hold up Donald Trump as a freaking ROLE MODEL?? I’d say this completely kills all respect I had for him, but of course that would presume that I had any to begin with, and that ship sailed some time ago.
As for what reality TV leads to? That’s simple…more reality TV. Ask Richard Hatch. Or Lee Dewyze. Or, heck, the big dog himself, Gordon Ramsey. Hey, there are worse careers.
There have been failures in Sasuke on the Final Challenge but their final challenge usually is more than just a rope climb. Most recently for seasons 32 and 33 a spider climb, followed by a 7m salmon ladder (!!!) and then a rope climb. To date, no attempts have been made on it.
What a great night! A lot of cool saves and moments. There were almost three female finishers. Remarkable. And a big kudos to Beird for joining Graff as a female finisher.
As soon as they ran down the steps in this course I said it looked waaaay easier than the City finals – I think maybe they realized they went too far with them.
And they did a better job of having a mix of agility events and, well, ‘explosive’ upper arms events instead of a ton of upper arm endurance events one after another.
Recycled stories. Really. I counted three tonight. This is getting out of hand.
Not sure what the point of bringing in Mike Tirico is if you’re only going to have him make very obvious observations and then dump him after one lousy run. And notice how subdued Eyes and Bodge were the whole time? Must’ve been super awkward for them.
20 finishers in the first half? Color me surprised and more than a little impressed. The new obstacles didn’t make any real impact; Double Dipper and Domino Pipes knocked out a few of the weaker competitors but the rest handled them without any trouble, and Parkour Run was a non-factor (only Jesse Labreck got stymied and no one went out). The thing I found the most remarkable was that only one person timed out, and only because the net caught him before he hit the water. That goes to show you not only how powerful this crop is, but how much more formidable they are than the contenders from even two years ago. I remember a time when Jumping Spider was absolutely lethal and Warped Wall broke hearts in a way Taylor Swift could only dream about. Now it looks like they’ve been largely figured out. Fewer trouble spots, less pressure, less energy wasted on earlier obstacles…much more success.
Is this a good thing? Mmmmm…I’m going to say yes. 
I know that this Sasuke and it’s supposed to be a killer, but there is such a thing as too much, too soon. If the field is completely shredded after Stage 1, that pretty much kills the drama for the rest of the contest. (Real drama, not some maudlin treacly weepy rubbish about someone who doesn’t have a damn thing to do with the competition.) One of the ironclad rules is that the audience has to think that someone has a chance, and that’s a much easier sell with 40 getting through than 17.
StarvingButStrong - The quallies have no time limits and guaranteed placements. Somewhere along the lime some genius got the idea that “Hey, that means we can make them as ridiculous as we want and we’ll still have the same number moving on to Stage 1!” And then NBC learned that this also meant that they could milk every last microdrop of hype from each grunt and strain and sweat, and that was all she wrote. This was their invention, so they can do whatever they want with it; I don’t see this changing anytime soon.
Truly one of the more entertaining episodes I can recall. Three strong runs from women (although I sure wouldn’t have predicted which of them actually finished. “No one falls on grip and timbers” LOL. Some amazing saves on the domino thing. JJ Woods with a truly remarkable leap to beat the parkour run. My main man Flip Rodriguez back to stage 2.
And since when is Lance Pekus legitimately one of the top competitors?
I was amazed at how many people who finished the course got WWWAed. Including some really well-known Ninjas, like Bull.
I guess they decided failures and sob stories were more worth watching.
I’m afraid that’s just a symptom of the, ahem, paradigm shift that’s happened lately.
See, how it used to be was that a competitor needed mental focus, considerable physical ability, and dedication to have any chance of making it past prelims, and a nice tragedy or “inspirational” tale to get attention, and there wasn’t much overlap between the two. In the early days NBC would put up their gritty life stories, who’d invariably come up way short of Cityfinals, and then they’d have to get creative. Then once Stage 1 rolled around, with just the best of the best left, there was only one story: Who would advance?
But now this thing has blown up big time (pretty impressive considering that it’s still essentially an amateur sport), with the result a lot of the tragedies and inspirations and feel-goods etc. have started training hard and getting really good. And on top of that, you also have established second- and third-tier contenders who, by dint of being around for a long time, have since encountered hardships (hello, Lance Pekus! :rolleyes:). Not very many, but definitely enough to fill two hours.
The bottom line now is, now that NBC can milk the tragedies, the inspirations, the feel-goods, the cautionary tales (and the occasional allegedly “quirky” story…seriously, who gives a crap about shakerboarding) from start to finish, that’s exactly what they’re going to do. Which means that not only are plenty of strong-but-boring contenders going to be left in the cold, several others who had inspirational tales will as well simply because they’ve outlived their usefulness. Kevin Bull is the perfect example. When he first burst onto the scene, virtually none of ANW’s audience had any idea what alapecia was. Now Bull has gone as far to invite members of an alapecia support group to watch him in action. His efforts normalized the condition for a great many Americans, and while that certainly is a good thing, a fantastic thing, one little side effect is that alapecia no longer qualifies as an interesting story. Unlike, say, Tourette’s Syndrome or losing a limb, it doesn’t make it any harder for him to complete the course, and let’s face it, in the Internet age, “Hey, that guy looks like a department store mannequin!” doesn’t have any mileage.
Honestly, I don’t think this would’ve happened if G4 survived. Competitive video games are all about numbers and distances and who’s better than whom. G4 would almost certainly have kept the focus on the top contenders and shown all the runs from Stage 1 onward. That’s pretty much how they handled the original Ninja Warrior and Women of Ninja Warrior.
Line of the night by Jessie Graff, a true ninja warrior, “I thought that I had it and so I didn’t.”
Darn, I was really hoping to see her make it stage 3 (or beyond).
Bit of a bummer that Graff had to have her inner demons take control at the worst possible moment. I have no doubt that were she in an unforgiving but still fairly reasonable sport (golf, for example), she’d kick butt. But, again, when one tiny slipup means no more action for the rest of the year, it can be hard for even the real starts to stick out. I didn’t think she’d clear stage 2, but it’d be nice to see how much farther she could push the envelope. She’ll be back, and all the smart money is on another trip to Stage 1.
Glad Kacy Catanzaro’s moving on. I’m sure it wasn’t an easy decision, but at some point she had to face the facts that her career was going absolutely nowhere and her youth and energy weren’t going to last forever. Success in the WWE is always a crapshoot, but I know she’s going to work her butt off, and I wish her nothing but success. (And if I may say, I’m surprised at how skillfully she took those back bumps…not something you learn in gymnastics, that’s for sure!)
Other than that…not a whole lot to say. There were a record number of finishers, but that’s largely due to the fact that Stage 1, unlike Sasuke’s, hasn’t gotten a whole lot harder over the years, and with a field this strong, a lot of them are going to have no trouble. The only thing I find a bit remiss is that NBC is now hyping up completing Stage 1 as this BIG HUGE HONKING TRIUMPH, and…why, exactly? It’s a quart of the way through, and the easiest quarter by far. There have been plenty of contestants who breezed through Stage 1 and proceeded to get demolished seconds into Stage 2.
So it all gets wrapped up in two hours…wait, two hours for the entire remainder of the contest? With 42 contestants? Even accounting for grand-scale waiweewuwwawei-ing and ondacoursrainao-ing, that can’t be enough time for a Stage 4. So the script hasn’t changed; a massive chop in Stage 2 followed by the few survivors giving out at some point on Stage 3. That’s what it looks like, anyway. Given the relentless rah-rah positivity that’s gone all the way to both days of Stage 1 now, you have to wonder just how NBC is going to spin this. Y’know what, that desperate dance might actually make for a better show.
Any word about the next Team Ninja Warrior? That’s the really fun one for me now.
I agree with your analyses, and I suspect they’ll make stage 1 harder next year. It was nearly unchanged this year from last, which is a bit odd. And in recent years we’ve had some fairly top tier competitors flubbing stage 1 (Geoff Britten and Travis Rosen on the floating steps last year, and a bunch of people missing the landing on the ribbon glider thing). This year the only real shock was Jessie Graff.
I was super-happy to see David Campbell make it to stage 2 again. Now if Flip can make it to stage 3 I will be truly content.
I looked at the time remaining when Joe M. started his run. I knew he would not finish because there was not enough time to
Interesting the took out the hanging rock climb in stage 3. The peg thing didn’t look too bad, but with no rest that is a long sequence (good for JM to hang and rest his arms)
Brian
Yeah, the timing was a dead giveaway. I’ve got to move the clocks I can see from my couch – it spoils too many shows for me. (No, the hero won’t trap the villain this time, there’s too much time left.)
Also, can I say that having had to put down your dog after a reasonably long lifetime is the LAMEST SOB STORY EVAH.
If you’d told me that 3 people would make it to stage 3, I certainly would not have picked that precise trio.
Joe proves he is definitely the top ninja of the past 5 years. In fact, since I started watching, he’s the only person to twice be the “winner” of a season, if you define that as the person who goes the furthest.
(Brent Steffenson, Brian Arnold, Isaac Caldiero and Drew Dreschel have each done it once, Joe has now done it twice).
Crazy how many people failed at the dismount from the swingy things.