Mayhem Making Monstrous Offseason Moves, Adds 2 Top Ten Games Finishers, 4 Total
At the 2021 CrossFit Games, forty-three athletes competed under the Mayhem Athlete banner across all divisions, a record for the Cookeville-based training center. During the offseason, they’ve made strategic moves to bolster the roster even further, adding five individual athletes, three of which finished top 10 in 2021.
Who’s new to the list:
- Guilherme Malheiros – 7th
- Lazar Dukic – 9th
- Agustin Richelme – Argentinian National Champion, finished 32nd
- Piero Gorichon – Chilean National Champion, 10th at the Brazil CrossFit Championship
- Individual athletes already on the list: Alex Vigneault, Royce Dunne, Samuel Cournoyer, Alexandre Caron, Aleksandar Ilin, Stas Solodov, Haley Adams, Baylee Rayl, Jessica Griffith and Sasha Nievas.
One big thing: Mayhem has quietly emerged as the powerhouse training center for the most elite CrossFit athletes, far surpassing the number of competitors across the other camps with the potential to field more than 50 athletes at the 2022 Games across all divisions.
- All of this happened over the course of two seasons when they went from attempting to field two super teams at the 2019 Games to winning the affiliate cup in 2020 and fielding a full roster of top tier competitors.
- This just shows how fast trends shift and move in the elite landscape.
Some deeper insight into the five newcomers:
- Guilherme Malheiros: Malheiros was right at the top of the list following the Games this summer of athletes everyone was talking about. His performance at the Games was obviously fantastic, taking seventh overall; but it was bolstered emphatically by three impressive event wins. When asked about the decision making process Malheiros was succinct and clear in his response: “If you want to be a shark, you gotta swim with the sharks”. Malheiros backed up his Games performance this past weekend at the Rogue Invitational (where he took 5th), including bagging two more event wins (on the Bella Complex and the Duel).
- Lazar Dukic: Rounding out the trio of top ten males who are now aligned with the Mayhem crew is ninth place finisher Lazar Dukic. The five time fittest man in Serbia has been setting himself up for this kind of success for a handful of years now. Declining his invite in 2019, he preferred to wait until he felt he was actually ready to be competitive at the Games to attend. He did that this year, and as a result has reaped the rewards for his performance in the form of new opportunities, one of which is this one with Mayhem. “I wanted to start working with Mayhem and Facundo as my coach because Mayhem attracts and invites only the best in the sport in their circle. They have so much experience with the Games and all competitions that can benefit me. I’ve known Facundo since 2019 when I won a competition he and Mayhem organized. He’s reached out to me to check in a couple times since then, so we won’t need much time to get to know each other either.” As with Saxon and Gui, Lazar competed this past weekend at Rogue (and made his official Instagram announcement of his alignment with the Mayhem team).
- South American National Champions Agustin Richelme (Argentina) and Piero Gorichon (Chile) have also teamed up with Facundo and the Mayhem field of athletes, adding to the pedigree they’ll have heading into the 2022 season.
The big picture: Rich Froning and the Mayhem empire are expanding into a variety of realms including farming, coffee, Nascar, and hosting competitions internationally, but they are also making a big push in 2021 and heading into 2022 to also boast the most prolific roster of male individual athletes. Add it to the list of things that are going right down in Cookeville, TN.