Over the weekend, the Good Morning Murph podcast published a recent interview with Brian Friend, CrossFit analyst and founder of B.Friendly Fitness, and Austrian Masters athlete Shireen Maria Sarwari.
- The primary focus of the nearly two-hour conversation was the events surrounding the 2024 CrossFit Games, the death of Lazar Ðukić, the aftermath of the Games weekend, and Friend’s thoughts on the 2025 season.
In the interview, podcast host Michael Gruber asks Friend to recount the decisions he made personally in the days following Ðukić’s death, including the decision to leave Fort Worth early.
They then turned to his decision to stay mostly quiet on the information he learned on-site and through conversations with Luka Ðukić and the Ðukić family.
The timing of the interview seemed curious, but in an email, Friend explained to the Morning Chalk Up that, “It’s something I’ve been contemplating and preparing for over the past few months, but I was never sure when and where I would do it.”
- Friend continued: “This podcast with Michael and Shireen happened very naturally and spontaneously…I also think the way Michael set it up for a community who is largely still searching for answers [the European CrossFit community] was important.”
One big thing: Friend shares some information in the interview that might not yet be widely known and offers his thoughts on matters that have caused significant and, at times, controversial discussions among CrossFit pundits.
With that context established, let’s take a look at three key takeaways from the conversation.
Behind the Scenes in Fort Worth
After laying out some current details about the B.Friendly Fitness “World Tour,” the conversation turned to Fort Worth.
Friend shared that among the athletes he’s developed relationships with, Lazar was among the most special. It was a friendship that had grown immensely in the 15 or so months leading up to the 2024 CrossFit Games.
When asked what he believes happened to Ðukić that day in the water, Friend said that he knew Lazar wanted to win Event 1 and believed he was the favorite to win.
- “If you know Lazar, he’s pushed himself to the limits before where his body has shut down in competition. It happened in the Burj Khalifa run [at the 2022 Dubai Fitness Championship]. It happened at the end of ‘The Capitol’ a couple of years ago at the Games,” he said.
Friend went on to note that “there should be nobody in the history of our sport who has a more intimate understanding of the level that the athletes are willing to push themselves to than Dave Castro.”
Later, the discussion shifted to the safety protocols that had been implemented at the lake that day.
- “When we look at past Games, the organization’s structure, safety protocols, etc., surrounding [Event 1], I believe, all for financial reasons, were not in alignment with what Dave [Castro] and his team would typically do,” Friend said.
When asked about why he stayed initially but then left Fort Worth, Friend explained that he wanted to see how the event would handle the tribute to Lazar and how the first events of the day would play out.
He noted that he also had spoken with Luka Ðukić, Lazar’s younger brother, for 45 minutes early in the morning on Friday. Friend learned things that the rest of the community would not know until much later, including details about the conversation Luka had with Castro and Nicole Carroll following his brother’s body being pulled up from the lake bottom.
Read more about Luka Ðukić’s conversation with Dave Castro after Lazar’s death.
He went on to explain that he chose to leave after learning how Castro had (minimally) misrepresented that conversation to athletes, the media, and on the Friday morning livestream. Friend was also dismayed by the quick return to normalcy in the arena.
- “I’m thinking to myself, what are we doing here?… During the ‘Clean Ladder’ for the men, the music is back to full volume in the stadium. There’s no more somberness,” he said. “I see the ‘wave’ on; I see people doing the ‘Giddy Up Cowboy’ dance in the stadium.”
Before leaving, Friend and B.Friendly Fitness organized a small tribute ceremony lakeside. About 100 people attended, and the event was streamed for those in Serbia.
Dave Castro Should Have Resigned or Been Fired
The opinion that will undoubtedly get the most attention is Friend’s assertion that Dave Castro should have resigned or been fired after the Games.
- While many others, both inside and outside the CrossFit community, have made similar statements, Friend’s reasoning for doing so in the podcast interview is worth noting.
As referenced above, Friend asserted that CrossFit made financial decisions that “safety protocols…were not in alignment with what Dave [Castro] and his team would typically do.”
Friend blames the private equity company that owns CrossFit for those financial decisions. To that logic, though, Friend also notes that Castro has overseen open-water swimming events for as long as they have been programmed at the Games and that Castro, as Games Director, has the final say to make changes to events for any reason.
- “Especially when the workouts are in hot environments and exceed 30 minutes in time domain…like you need to be on point from a medical safety and risk mitigation perspective because the athletes will make irresponsible decisions for their health to try to win an extra point on the field of play,” he said.
“Dave has to know that as good as anybody,” Friend continued. “And he is also the only person who would be able to make a decision based on the resources that are available at the Games.”
He went on to suggest that, when given the opportunity, Castro will go to “extreme lengths” to ensure athlete safety.
He had one final point to lay out on this matter and drew his logic to a close:
- “[Castro] wasn’t given that opportunity from a financial perspective this year [to put adequate safety protocols in place], and from everything I’ve been able to tell, he was willing to risk that for the test instead of sacrifice the test for the safety of the athletes. And that alone is the reason why I can’t understand how he is still in the position he’s in,” Friend concluded.
In a follow-up email, Morning Chalk Up asked Friend if the same logic applied to CrossFit CEO Don Faul.
“Not really,” Friend said, explaining that Castro’s reintroduction as Games Director passed that responsibility to him.
- “I’m not entirely sure of the relationship between the Board of Directors, Don Faul, and the decision-making process, but my instincts tell me he is handcuffed to some degree when it comes to big decisions,” Friend said. “Dave [Castro] had full opportunity to assess the situation(s) at the Games and made decisions based on access to that information, and in-depth historical experience, which put him in a unique position. In this case, I feel it put him in the unique position to be the one who, for better or worse, has to bear the burden of what transpired under his watch.”
“10-40%” Drop in Open Participation in 2025
Finally, the conversation turned to the 2025 season, where Friend speculated that there would be a significant drop-off in Open registrations.
- “Everyone I’ve spoken to is projecting a drop-off in Open participation at a minimum of 10% and upwards of 40%. It’s a big range, but what is a common thing to say? You vote with your dollar,” he said.
Friend is not planning to sign up for the Open, even though he has every year since 2013. In addition, he will not sign up for the judges’ course, which he says he’s done since “2015 or 2016.”
- “I don’t feel like contributing financial support to the way that the company is operating now,” he said. “But it’s a gray area because I love training, and I love the community.”
That said, Friend thinks most of the top athletes will still compete during the 2025 Games season.
“A majority of the athletes — let’s call them the top 200 males and females in the world — are going to compete in the CrossFit Games season,” he said. “That’s what they do and they’ve already had to deal with the wild inconsistencies, the frustrations, and they’ve just adapted.”
- He noted, though, that there will be some in the top 50 and even top 10 in the world who will choose not to compete. And the end result will be similar to what we saw at the 2024 Games.
In other words, winning the Games may no longer represent an unassailable claim to being the “Fittest on Earth.”
The Bottom Line
There’s no doubt much to unpack in this nearly two-hour-long interview, including a lot of information and context that we were not able to convey here.
It’s definitely worth a listen.
In our email exchange, Friend clarified his goals in this podcast interview, and we will conclude with his words:
- “The goal of sharing these things is to provide more clarity and information, to give people an opportunity to make decisions for themselves with a more well-rounded perspective. My perspective is not the complete one, but most of the others who would have similarly valuable perspectives will not share those any time soon, if at all.”
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Featured image: @chadmueller / Instagram
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