WCXXIV Montgomery Day Two: Blink and You Missed It

Preceding this week’s event has been an enormous amount of preparation and publicity, not the least of which is the Sunday newspaper, the Montgomery Advertiser. You cannot purchase the front page, but we dominate it. 

Then, there’s been the daily feeds provided by the local NBC affiliate and Fox News’ coverage of what’s happening here in the deep South. 

Of course, much of the excitement stems from the interest in the hometown team. 

So today, all eyes were turned to the Blue course, where Montgomery was feeling the heat. The World Record (WR) for the Relay of the Scott Firefighter Combat Challenge was set last year at the Sprint Cup NASCAR event held at the PIR (Phoenix International Raceway). 

Their time was 1:07.22. 

This year, the Team was on track for a new WR in Farmer’s Branch, Texas, site of the US Nationals two weeks ago, when the Anchor Leg, Jake Lanier went down with the Rescue Randy mannequin, a 175 pound, anatomically correct training dummy. Only 50 feet separated the team from glory when the proverbial “carpet snake” snatched the victory. You can view that run at [https://youtu.be/FNjH9a-f404].

Mike Mederios, veteran competitor from Horry County (SC), arguably the premier student of relay ergonomics had calculated after watching hundreds of game films, that 1:05 was the proverbial sound barrier. His unchallenged statistics were proven correct today, here in Montgomery when the clock stopped at 1:05.6. 

“In this business, 2 seconds is huge,” said Dr. Paul Davis, Challenge Creator. 

Lanier was vindicated and the entire squad lauded by the energized crowd of hundreds of firefighters from 14 nations, 29 states and 7 Canadian provinces. 

The live stream is being carried daily around the globe, through Thursday at http://live.xalive.co/sfcc.html in full HD. The video of the run is in production and will be uploaded this evening. 

We are working on editing the run as seen from both the drone as well as the land-based camera shots. The story, as carried by WSFA can be seen here. http://www.wsfa.com/story/30295842/world-firefighter-combat-challenge-underway-in-montgomery

Friday, and Saturday the Championship coverage will be provided by ESPN3- viewable with any of the smart phone apps.

The view of the Scott Firefighter Combat Challenge course from the Embassy Suites

Wednesday, the competition continues with more “Wild Card trials” where teams and individuals vie for the slots that will be available on Friday and Saturday.