Crossfit: Big Love for Sam Briggs

Looking for a super hero? Good news! Your search is over.



Britian's own Samantha Briggs, reigning Crossfit Games Champion, whose performances in the Open (qualifying) stage had her ranked number 1 worldwide.

She arrived at last weekend's Europe Regional event needing to be in the top 3 by the time the 7th and final event was over. A formality, surely.

Event 2. An event that had destroyed the chances of another favourite, Stacie Tovar, in the North Central (USA) Regional. Samantha finishes in a disastrous 26th place.

She's way down in the overall classification, hopes of qualification dashed.

On her Instagram page she admits it's not been the best start to my Regionals, before defiantly adding, I'm no quitter... I'll be there tomorrow to fight to the end!!!

What followed was, without question, the best bit of sport - any sport - I have had the privilege to witness this year. Event 3. She wins. Event 4. Second.

She's climbing up the classifications.

Event 5. Run to a rope. Climb up it without using your legs. Run back to your (sizeable and weighty) marker. Move it back, away from the rope. Run back to the rope. Climb again. Back to marker. Move it further away from the rope again. Keep repeating until the last rope climb, then run back again and carry your marker over the finish line.



Sam is possessed. And by halfway the rest of the field - the other nine top-ranked Crossfitters in Europe - are trailing in her wake. While they get more ragged with each rope climb, Sam seems to actually climb it faster and faster as the event progresses.



"She's amazing!" exclaims my wife, who sat down to watch a bit of the live stream when the men were on, but has stayed to watch, and been impressed by, the women in the previous heats. Nobody has impressed her like Sam though. "Oh my God, she's amazing!" she says again. And she keeps saying it until well after Sam and her marker have crossed the finish line and we're both standing up and clapping.



Sam's finished over thirty seconds ahead of the next competitor, Sweden's Caroline Fryklund, and over a minute ahead of previous Games winner Annie Thorisdottir, who came fourth in the event and was the eventual top European qualifier.

But in fact it was what Samantha Briggs did after she had finished, when she and Annie saw that Katrin Thorisdottir (Annie's sister) was struggling to finish the event that epitomised not only her heroism, but also the camaraderie of the sport. Oh, and it also had the wife in tears (and yes, ok, I'll admit I was fighting them back too).

[I] Have a pic of Sam Briggs being a motivational m’fucker. She and Annie Thorisdottir were so good with Katrin Davidsdottir when she couldn’t finish event 5. What with the crowd being so supportive and everything seriously their heat was just heartwarming to watch, and that’s cheesy and I know it. And I love it.
Glaswegian crossfitter Harriet, aka propositionh



Sam Briggs absolutely CRUSHED event 5 today at the European Regional and then it seemed that Katrin Davidsdottir wanted to quit in the 8th round, even sitting down. Sam, as a true champion and in an unbelievable show of sportsmanship, actually picked up Katrin and tried to coach her through the work. This is CrossFit. This, even with all the bullshit that goes on in the periphery is what makes it all worthwhile.
Floridian (male) crossfitter That Mountain

Can you FEEL the love yet?

So, in events 3, 4 and 5 Sam has won, come second, and won. Sunday. Event 6. She wins again! One more event to go, and if anybody can, Samantha Briggs can...

She finishes 8th in the last event. Overall, she has climbed back up to 4th, but, it's not quite enough. She's outside the top 3. She won't be defending her title at the Games.



Well I gave it everything I had but unfortunately it just fell short! Obviously not happy to finish 4th but considering I had to fight back from a 26th place I'm proud of how I performed! Now to put my feet up, drink some alcoholic berveraves [that's how she spelt it] and cheer on Central East!!! Thank you to everyone for their support it's not the last they've seen of me I'll be back next year even more hungrier than ever!!!
from her Instagram, bicepslikebriggs

And all over the world, fans have been on the forums, on the Crossfit website, on their personal blogs, all saying similar things, all showing their love. They're saying that if, as is possible, wildcards are going to be awarded, Samantha Briggs had better be getting one, because the Games without the Queen is unthinkable, and any winner of the Games who hasn't beaten her will be a champion in name only.

Meanwhile, at home, my wife confesses to me what has been obvious since about 4.30 on Saturday afternoon - she has a raging girl crush on Samantha. She's talking about her on the phone to her friends, her cousin, her sister-in-law, and even her parents, whether they want to hear about her or not. "She's amazing!" she keeps saying.

Indeed she is.



The weekend's events hit me with a bang this morning & I just wanted to stay in bed all day... I gave myself two options: 1) sit and cry over something I cannot change, 2) go to the gym and do what I do best... I chose to TRAIN.

On a scale of 1 (which could be something like "Crossfit? Whatever!") to 10 "I am totally and utterly in awe of this woman, this warrior, this super-human super-hero champion", I'm at about 28. The wife is at about 635, and still rising.

Abs: 6x6

De La Soul taught us that 3 is The Magic Number, and far be it from me to contradict that, but for an old abs fan like me, 3 just won't cut it (get it?). I need 6. At least!

And thankfully, there are more than a few wonderful women out there who agree, and who absolutely will not stop until they have achieved that perfect number.

Today, FMS brings you just 6 of those many wonderful women.


Emmanuelle Ethier



Eat clean and train dirty is Emmanuelle's "fitness philosophy", and a creed she's been following all her life. I grew up athletic, she says, listing muay thai, surfing, crossfit, longboarding and softball among things she enjoys when not weight training. From L'Assomption in Québec, Emmanuelle set herself a challenge after turning 30: to compete. Now a WBFF Fitness competitor, she's not all sparkle and T-walk though. These perfect abs belong to a woman who works as a Correctional Officer. Yikes!

Follow Emmanuelle on Instagram and YouTube.


Linnéa Fransson



From Gullspång in Sweden, 21-year-old Linnéa is, without doubt, Swell's big new Crossfit crush. Watching her seemingly armour-plated body battle through the Crossfit Europe Regional is not an experience I will forget in a hurry - my smile was almost as broad as hers (and I was watching with the wife incidentally, but more of that tomorrow). Sadly, Linnéa (isn't that a lovely name, he said dreamily) withdrew from the final event of the weekend. If you need someone to kiss that injury better, Linnéa...

Linnéa has a YouTube channel and her Facebook page at one time had a profile pic that manages to be both incredibly disturbing and incredibly sexy at the same time. Strong and lithe, if she were an animal, she says she'd be a "supple leopard". Grrrrr!


Karla Bachiega



Karla, who seems to have been around for years, was crowned NABBA Brazil Miss Physique (and remember in NABBA, "Physique" = "Bodybuilding") just over a week ago, and the above image of her magnificently muscled mid-section is from that show.
Quite probably the next big (and I mean BIG) star to emerge from Brazil.

You can watch short but oh so very very sweet clips of her other recent contest appearance, at the Campeonato Paulista, as well as her NABBA Brazil routine. And I've got a feeling Karla's growth is going to make her Facebook page essential viewing too.


Tammy Tennant-McCoy



I'm literally drenched. It's crazy how much you sweat after posing practice, Tammy, a New York City NPC Figure Queen, shared with her Instagram followers along with this pic a couple of days ago. When some asked for video of her abs workouts, she replied, You guys might think I'm crazy with the way I twist and build my core. I may lose followers! Seriously if you guys want I'll post them but the best advice I can give you about abs is they are not only made in the gym. Clean eating is hard but it's an art you should try to master when you want to see results. She's quite the artist then.

For more of Tammy's sexy sassy muscle see her Facebook.





No name for this one, I'm afraid, but who needs a name when you have an imagination [eh? - ed.]. I've said before how much I'm in awe of the kind of woman who can perform this movement - if I tried this, I'd pop a hernia faster than my hands went under the table when I first saw this pic - but when the woman performing the movement has a set of abs that were sent to show us what perfection looks like, then my awe quickly becomes... well, my drool. Or something.

What I can imagine though, is that the bag is me, and those powerful legs are wrapped around my waist or my chest or my neck even. Obviously I'd be strong enough to stand the 100 or so reps she does of this movement. Strong and very very very HAPPY.


Linda Durbesson



And last, but by no means least, oo-la-la, it's Linda Durbesson: modelling in Paris, training clients in Florida, transforming minds, bodies and lives, and scribbling motivation all over her selfies, all in the name of her very own LDFit brand.

Website, Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, and her own Facebook fanpage.

Enjoy!

The Queen of New York

The first time the Women's Physique Division appeared at the New York Pro show back in 2012, the title was won by Brazil's Juliana Malacarne. A year later, at the same show, Juliana triumphed again. And last weekend, (yes, you guessed it) for the third year in a row, Juliana was crowned the Physique Queen of New York.



It was also her second win of the year, or more accurately, her second win of the month. She had also triumphed at the Europa Pro show in Dallas at the start of May. Apart from that and her NYC treble, she has only stepped onto the stage as a physique competitor and not won once, at last year's Olympia, where she finished 7th.




Juliana Christina Malacarne was born in São Paulo, Brazil. Growing up, she - like so many men and women of her generation - first got into muscle because of a certain Mr Schwarzenneger (say what you like about his politics, acting skills, attitude towards female bodybuilders, or indeed his attitude to women in general, but without Arnold, there'd be a lot less female muscle in the world). More specifically, it was watching Conan the Barbarian that first piqued her interest in pumping iron.



That interest grew and grew, and subsequently she found more feminine inspiration from 90s fitness champ Monica Brant (who is still competing by the way, she's the reigning WBFF Pro Figure World Champion). Juliana started competing sometime before 2002, but took a break to complete her degree. By 2005 she was back, winning her class (short) in the Figure division at the South American Championships.



What followed was a largely unremarkable career as a figure competitor. A 7th place at the Palm Beach Pro in 2006 and a 4th place in the Master's class at the Atlantic City Pro in 2008 were the only real "highlights" I could find on her figure CV. Her experience in New York in the pre-physique era consisted of a 13th place in 2008, a 10th place in 2009, and no placing at all in 2010. What a contrast with the last three years!



Her poor record in figure competition didn't stop her fame spreading, for pretty obvious reasons, within the female muscle lovin' community, but since the advent of the Physique division, she has risen to full-on goddess status. In our inaugural Hot and Hard 100 poll earlier in the year, Juliana finished top Brazilian (above Reis, Brazier, Vieira et al) and 4th overall. On the forum whose first rule is you do not talk about the forum, she beat Mavi Gioia to be voted Physique Goddess of the Year in 2013.



Yet this is a woman who we actually know very little about. For example, I can't, despite a fair bit of effort trying to find out, say with any great certainty how old she is. She has a family, a husband, a child or children, and is still based in Brazil, I think. Or possibly Florida. Or perhaps it's both! Juliana, you see, is a woman who keeps her private life cards close to her mightily impressive chest. She does Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Loads of great pics, but none of them give very much away.




But I don't need to know all the ins and outs of Juliana's life to appreciate her, and I doubt you do, dear reader. Look at her on stage last weekend, the Queen of New York again. It should be obvious to all that Juliana Malacarne is pure class.




Congratulations to Juliana and bom divertimento to you all!

Pic of the Week

When photographing anything MONUMENTAL - whether it's the Pyramids, Mont Blanc, Mmmonique Jones or the Taj Mahal - it's always a good idea to have something or someone else in the photo to provide the viewer with some SCALE.



Now, that, dear reader, is MMMUSCLE.

Enjoy!

FBBUK: Jackie Hague

Yet another female bodybuilder from the red rose county of Lancashire (Linda Gartside, Ria Ward, and NABBA athlete Catherine Hosker-Brothers all hail from the area, and Lisa Cross, reader of this blog and female muscle literary giant, was also born in Lancashire - and hasn't lost the accent so far!), FMS decided, while we are thinking about Bolton (Lancashire) (see yesterday's post), to take the opportunity to give a long overdue mention to the current UKBFF North-West physique champion, Jackie Hague, who is from Blackpool, and yes, Blackpool is also in Lancashire.



Jackie was crowned the regional champ for the third consecutive year at the start of May - she had won as a bodybuilder in 2012 before her victory in Physique last year. So, again, for the third year running, Jackie has qualified for the UKBFF British Championships, which this year will be in Nottingham in October. She finished 6th (as a bodybuilder in 2012, and last year came fourth behind Ria Ward, Hayley Brylewski and Alessandra Tumolo - who is originally from Italy but is now based just across the Pennines in Yorkshire - in the Physique class.



Jackie on stage in 2013, looking proud

Jackie started training in 2010. We were going on a family holiday to Majorca and I just wanted to look decent in my bikini, says the 36-year-old mother of two. Fortunately, her husband Noel had been training for some time, and was able to show her the ropes and give her the encouragement she needed. I found that I really liked it and it was suggested I try a bodybuilding competition and it just went from there. And her husband isn't the only member of her family to have encouraged her. The kids love it – they are always telling me how well I’m doing and that I’m going to win. They were there to see me win my first competition, that was amazing! They actually gave me the confidence to get on stage, having both performed countless times themselves for the school orchestra all around Blackpool in front of big audiences.



Jackie before, during and after her victory at the UKBFF North-West 2014

I think it's safe to say that Jackie looks considerably more than 'decent' now, whether she's in a bikini or not. It feels great to look like this, she says. I get mixed reactions walking down the street but most of the comments from men are very flattering!



And there have also been more than a few positive comments about Jackie's recent pictures on the fan forums: She is simply stunning! says one fan. Others go for utterly stunning or absolutely gorgeous as better descriptions. But they all agree that she is a great role model for female bodybuilding in the UK! In particular, the selfie in the Gold's Gym vest (above, right) has received more than its fair share of attention. Look at her pecs! screams one fan. Nothing but rock hard sculpted muscle!!!



With her regional title secured for the third consecutive year, six new clips of her on Fit Vidz, and a growing international fanbase, it seems like this 5'1" (1.54m) muscle mum really is, as Real Female Bodybuilding put it last year, a star on the rise.







And we leave you today with her Fit Vidz trailer.



Enjoy! And visit Lancashire.