Being a big fan of any reality show that features dopey physical challenges (eg: Survivor), my favorite show in this genre has to be American Ninja Warrior. It’s the American version of a Japanese game show where contestants navigate elaborate obstacle courses.
In the five years American Ninja Warrior has been on, no woman has ever completed the city qualifying stage. Two have made it to the final obstacle: the warped wall, but no woman has ever reached the top to hit the buzzer. You can still qualify without beating the warped wall by getting to it fast enough.
Kacy Catanzaro is 5’0", 100 pounds, and has the voice to match. She’s so over the top cute I can’t stand it; I want to hug her and squeeze her and call her George. Anyway, here is Kacy’s city qualifying run:
She made it far enough fast enough to move on to the city finals, which was this week. The city finals course is the same as the qualifying course, but then a whole second half is added to the end of it. The second half is mostly upper-body oriented, which does not favor women. Here's her city finals run:
Words can't express how truly awesome I think Kacy Catanzaro is.
She really is something. She’s an awesome athlete and although you certainly can’t know a person from a few short interviews she seems genuinely nice and likable.
Those ANW guys are so incredible. I always marvel at the submission tapes. But after watching for a few years now I thought I was getting a bit jaded… I mean, after all, they are ALL so talented.
I was coy in the OP, but it’s worth mentioning that her qualifying run was the first time a woman had ever climbed the warped wall in competition. It’s only the sixth year of competition, but that’s still an impressive piece of history-making. Well worth watching.
The second run is just crazy. The youtube video was posted two days ago and it’s already gotten 2.3 million views.
But, yeah that was phenomenal. There was one obstacle on that final run (with the weird, oblong, red, tilty things) that I just couldn’t see how she could possibly clear it at her size. Also a couple of really impressive recoveries, that she made look easy. I quit watching this a couple of years ago, so thanks for the post. Performances like this are why I was such a big fan of the original.
I watched that last night and it brought a tear to my eye, and I’m a big, strapping, macho-sort-of male type of person with testosterone and beard stubble and what-not.
I loved the way she pounded the buzzer repeatedly, like “Motherf*ckin’ yeah, bitches!”
