"The Olympics of the Armed Forces"
I spent the weekend at the 2024 Best Ranger Competition, where elite 2-man teams of Ranger School graduates endure the most difficult 3-day competition in the Military. I couldn't NOT write about it.
4:15 a.m., my alarm goes off.
I grudgingly roll out of my bed in the Airbnb I’m staying at with friends in Columbus, GA - Home of the Fort Moore (formerly Fort Benning) Army Base, and the site of the annual competition commonly known as “The Olympics of the Armed Forces.”
It’s Friday, April 12th, and it’s the first day of the 2024 Best Ranger Competition.
Now listen… What you’re about to read could be written a lot more eloquently. It’s been written that way a bunch of times, by a bunch of great writers already. They’ll talk about the history of the competition, they’ll commemorate past competitors, they’ll write in a way that it’s great press for the Army and could maybe even be published in the Army Times. This won’t be like that.
I’m going to write a little more candidly - I think you’ll appreciate that more.
Until this past weekend, I hadn’t been back to Fort Moore since April of 2021, when I myself competed in this competition with my partner, Andrew.
The train-up and the competition, together, are the hardest thing I’ve ever done.
I want to give you some perspective on what makes this thing so difficult. I’m a guy who’s no stranger to hard things - I don’t know why I’m wired the way I am, but I am.
I’ve run marathons and ultramarathons, some 9,000+ ft. above sea level.
I’ve wrestled at a nationally competitive level and played Division one football.
I’ve competed in Jiu Jitsu, I got through the U.S. Army Ranger School… Long story short, for fear of sounding like a cocky prick, I believe that in most circles I’m confident that I can find a way to be a top performer.
Now, let me provide a little more context to show you why this competition is so fucking hard.
The Caliber of the Competitors
For this competition, I was barely selected to compete on one of the four teams that my unit was allocated to send to this competition. I’m not kidding - I was the eighth guy to make the cut of the eight guys the 101st Airborne Division was going to be sending to the 2021 competition, where more than fifty teams from most of the Army units around the world sent their best two-person teams to compete. Even our alternate was a guy who could literally show up to work out after a sleepless night, drink a red bull, and max out the Army Combat Fitness Test (ACFT) with relative ease.
Between the other seven guys (and I’m going to miss some stuff):
At least two full Ironmans
At least a dozen ultramarathons
Two are now in Special Forces
Three T-20 MBAs, one Ivy League degree
All seven capable of running a sub-five minute mile by the end of our train-up
All seven capable of rucking with forty-five pounds on their back for twelve miles in under two hours by the end of our train-up
We were all lucky to be at a unit that really gave us their full support for this competition. For about four months, our full-time job was to get into the best shape of our lives, hone in our shooting and weapons competency, and practice over and over again any and every tactical and technical skill that a Ranger could be asked to perform in a combat situation.
We were all running around sixty to seventy miles a week, with some of our better runners eclipsing one-hundred-mile weeks.
In a typical day we would:
Run or ruck between 8-12 miles in the morning
Shoot some kind of weapon for 1-2 hours at a range
Practice a technical skill for 2-3 hours
Lift weights for 1-2 hours
Our teams were LOADED and extremely well-prepared… and this is just an example of FOUR of the fifty or so teams that compete in this damn thing every year.
Not every unit sends teams with accolades like ours, and our performance in 2021 was a reflection of that. Of our four teams, we finished in 5th, 8th, and 14th, with our fourth team barely missing the cut to place. That being said, each and every year this competition seems to get more difficult, and the standard for excellence gets higher and higher.
Just to be sent to this thing to represent your unit is an accomplishment in itself.
Then, the competition starts.
The Competition Events
The Best Ranger Competition goes from roughly 0600 on Friday to 1600 on Sunday.
In that time, competitors will:
Cover 70-80 miles on their feet between runs and rucks (for time, of course, with ~30 of these miles happening after dark)
Shoot a variety of weapons at a dozen or so different ranges
Complete 3-4 different obstacle courses and several other Crossfit-style tactical WODs
Be cognitively tested with a plethora of technical tasks like radio and weapons assembly, use of robots, and door-breaching machinery
Oh and last but not least, sleep ~4 hours all weekend (if they’re lucky) and rely on MRE’s for fuel… no gatorades, gu’s, or other supplements
Altogether, there are thirty to forty events with very short breaks in between to rest, recover, and strategize for the next event. From the opening gun to the end of the day on Sunday, you are going without stopping through the most difficult gauntlet of events the sadistic competition planners can come up with…
And that’s IF you make it to Sunday.
The Brutal Nature of the Competition
This competition is scripted as if there are a team of evil geniuses assigned to analyze each event and ask the question, “Okay, how do we make this more miserable?”
The competition as a whole is designed with the intent that each competitor has to be extremely well-rounded coming into the event, and from there as a baseline, be able to adapt, make adjustments, and improvise as the competition goes on.
You can’t JUST be an athlete, you have to be able to shoot, too.
You can’t JUST be fast, you have to carry your bodyweight sometimes, too.
You can’t just be resilient over distance, you have to be able to explode at top speed through an obstacle course, too.
And even if you are as prepared as you can possibly be… you have to count on and hope that your partner is as prepared as you are.
You get the gist.
The competition works in what’s called a guillotine-format, where at certain stages throughout the weekend, the furthest behind teams in the field are cut, to be sent back home to their units empty-handed.
This year, fifty-six teams started on Friday morning.
Ten teams were cut less than two hours in.
Forty-six teams went to twenty-eight teams AFTER the first night’s ruck, around 0400 on Saturday morning.
Twenty-eight teams went to sixteen teams AFTER the second night’s land navigation, around 0300 on Sunday.
The cuts are ruthless - you can’t strategize or save anything in the tank for an event that you’re good at later on. Going all-out from the opening gun is not a choice, but a necessity.
The other strategy to confuse and frustrate competitors is that some of the variables in some events remain a complete mystery to competitors until the event is happening.
One example of this is the unknown distance ruck on the first night of the competition. The competitors know they have a foot march at night, that kicks off around 1900 or so, right as the sun is going down in Columbus, Georgia. They know they have to stay with their partner. They know their ruck weighs about forty-five pounds, their water weighs around ten, and the dummy rifle they can’t put down or hand off to their partner weighs around fourteen or fifteen. They know that in previous years the distance has been between 18-30 miles, but they’re forbidden from using any kind of GPS so there’s no way of knowing where the hell they’re at in the middle of the night.
A starting gun is fired, and they only know to go with their partner, into the night, until they’re told to stop. Talk about a mindfuck.
And that’s on night one.
This year, I went down to Columbus to watch two of the best guys I had met in the Army compete for their third and final attempt (The Bergman-Rose rule caps competitors at three attempts): SFC Nicholas Whitney, and CPT Aaron Arturi.
I met both Aaron and Nick in Ranger School, and we remained friends and have gotten together several times over the past few years after graduating from the course. I’ve since run two ultramarathons with Aaron and one with Nick.
These guys are the cream of the crop in the Army.
Thank whatever god you pray to that they’re on our side - believe me. I don’t know all of their accolades off the top of my head and they’re both too humble to tell me, but they are some of the absolute best at what they do in their “regular” Army jobs, as athletes, as Soldiers, and as men.
When I first heard them talking about a year ago about partnering together for their last attempt at Best Ranger, I couldn’t think of a better pairing. It would be the perfect storm come April.
Nick is the picturesque Non-Commissioned Officer. A former powerlifter and wrestler, he’s the kind of guy you want on your side in a back-alley brawl. He’s a bit on the shorter and stockier side with a gruff voice and a tattoo sleeve. He doesn’t get rattled by really anything, and is extremely adept at technical tasks and handling weapons. Nick took 8th and 6th in his previous two attempts. He has mastered the balance of eliciting fear, respect, and admiration from his peers, subordinates, and ranger students alike at the 4th Ranger Training Battalion at Fort Moore, GA.
Aaron is on the Officer side and is a Company Commander at the 6th Ranger Training Battalion at Camp Rudder, FL. Aaron has always done things the right way. He’s an unbelievable person with great “locker-room energy,” that isn’t always common among officers. He’s also become one of the most impressive runners in the entire Army, outside of the WCAP program. I regularly have friends send me screenshots of his Strava activities, saying, “Holy shit, did you just see this run from Arturi?”
Aaron and his partner barely missed the cut for the last day at their first Best Ranger attempt, and then finished in the top ten at their second. I’ve never seen anyone push as hard as Aaron does. We joke with him about how he has “one speed,” but for a competition like Best Ranger, all-out effort from the first morning is what it takes.
These guys were going to be a force to be reckoned with.
It was the morning of the second day.
Only twenty-eight teams began this day, down from fifty-six at the beginning of the competition. The men at the starting line on day two were showing up on very little sleep, after the above-mentioned unknown distance ruck march that took them through most of the night.
And now, an entire new day of grueling events lay ahead.
Nick and Aaron began the day in second place overall. The previous day was just flat-out awesome to watch as a spectator. In it’s purest form, it had been a beautiful display of months and months of preparation coming to fruition. There wasn’t much on day one that Nick and Aaron hadn’t accounted for. They were cool, calm and collected through some harrowing runs, a swim, some tactical events, and several shooting ranges. Their combined competition experience was evident, and it was so cool to see how well they communicated with each other and moved fluidly through each event.
Day two began in a coliseum-like environment known as A.J. McClung Stadium. At least, it felt like a coliseum when the surviving teams entered the arena. There was a noticeable shift in Nick and Aaron’s demeanor, as to be expected after fifty-one miles on foot in the previous 24 hours. On day one they were in high spirits - giving our little team #37 fan club a wave or smile when they heard us cheering for them at some of the events.
At the beginning of day two, it was obvious.
They were here to fuck shit up.
This was going to be the day they kicked it into another gear and sent the message that they were destined to win this competition together. In the weeks and months leading up to the competition, they had told us that they felt pretty comfortable in most of the anticipated day one and day three events, but day two is where they would dominate. Those of us there to watch them perform could not wait to see what was about to unfold.
The field was decorated with different event “lanes,” each lane with different obstacles, barriers, or tasks the competing teams would have to overcome. The gauntlet of events on day two was named “Pointe Du Hoc,” After a legendary Ranger Battalion beach assault in WWII that was deemed an impossible mission. Spoiler alert: those Rangers got it done.
With all lanes being timed and forcing competitors to move as fast as possible, the first lane consisted of some barriers that one man at a time had to sprint around, before crawling under twenty or so feet of concertina wire, then climbing over two six-foot walls, before flipping an enormous truck tire another twenty feet or so.
Oh, and you had to do all of this while carrying a sixty-pound sandbag.
Nick Whitney was to be the first to go, then he would run back and tag Aaron in to go through the same course of events. Nick, being stationed at this base, had a massive fan club in the arena that morning. Even people affiliated with other competing teams had come up to us the previous day and told us, “I know I’m supposed to be pulling for team xx, but it would be so great to see Whitney and Arturi get it done.” Being both of their last attempts, a lot of people had seen them compete before, and they just did everything with such high character and respect for the other teams that it was hard not to want to support them.
Nick toed the line with the heavy sandbag, and the Ranger Instructor accompanying him started his stopwatch. Nick took off around the barriers, moving at a great pace, with Aaron both cheering for and coaching him on from back at the start line.
Then, Nick hit the deck and began low-crawling under the c-wire, pushing the sandbag in front of him. He was making great time - they were crushing this event, as they thought they would.
Nick got to the first wall, and heaved the sandbag over like it was nothing. Other teams had to turn their back to the wall and toss the sandbag over with all the power from their legs and hips - Nick shot-putted it over with one arm like the beast he is.
Over the first wall he went with ease, and scooped up the sandbag on the other side.
Then, he approached the second wall.
It began the same way. He tossed the sandbag over like it was weightless. He reached up to grab the top of the wall, pulled himself up on top of it, and leapt down onto the other side…
And immediately, he collapsed and clutched his right leg.
The raucous cheering in the arena stopped - and this phrase gets overused - but you could literally hear a pin drop. I’ve seen nick bloody and bruised before, in environments that would break 90% of people, and he’s there smiling and joking - completely undisturbed.
Based on his instant agony, those of us who knew Nick closely knew… this was not a minor injury.
We all held our breath as on-site medics rushed over to Nick on the ground. Ten or so long seconds passed… then Nick stood up, and hobbled with a very visible limp over towards the truck tire.
The silence was broken when Nick’s wife Katie yelled, “Come on Nick!” The arena came back to life, louder than before. Nobody, not even the rivaled 75th Ranger Regiment, wanted to see these warrior’s dreams dashed due to injury.
When Nick flipped the giant tire the first time, it literally gave me chills.
We got even louder.
He crouched down to flip it again, with the entirety of his weight on his left foot. Driving through his single usable leg, he got the tire up to about chest level, switched his grip to push from underneath it, and flipped it again.
We couldn’t believe what we were seeing.
Then, a third flip.
This sounds corny, but the only thing I can compare it to is that it was like watching Rocky claw his way back into the fight from the brink of defeat against Ivan Drago. Normal men would’ve bowed out the instant the injury occurred, and being that it was completely out of their control, there would be no shame in that.
But Nick is no normal motherfucker.
He had one flip to go to complete the lane. He got his hands underneath it and single-leg squatted it to about waist height, then it came crashing back down to the ground. He had already exceeded what we thought was possible, he could bow out now and let the medics intervene and we’d be so damn proud of his effort.
Then Nick crouched down to get under the tire again. This time, he heaved with all his might, got his chest under the tire, and shoved it forward for one final flip, before collapsing to the ground again.
The medics came in, and so did Aaron. Bound by an unbreakable bond of loyalty, Aaron put his arm under Nick’s and helped him walk off the field like the champions they were.
Their third and final Best Ranger Competition was over.
Katie (Nick’s wife) and Audrey (Aaron’s fiancée) made their way over to the medical tent, then the rest of their support group followed a few minutes later. The initial diagnosis was a fully torn MCL and meniscus.
Years of training and all of the pieces in place to finally capture a Best Ranger Competition Title, taken away by the one thing that neither of them could account for: injury.
From this point forward, I want you to really pay attention. This is the part that matters most. Everything hereafter is what defines who these two really are.
When I arrived over at the back of the medical vehicle where Nick was sitting and Aaron was standing by, I still wasn’t sure what I would say to either of them. They were devastated at a level I couldn’t begin to understand. I hugged Aaron first and just told him I loved him and was proud of him. The first words out of Aaron’s mouth were, “It is what it is, nothing you can do about something like that.” A lot of people would be broken, or angry, or frustrated with their partner - Aaron put all of his emotions aside instantly, so that his only concern was Nick’s well-being.
In this moment, minutes after a tragic ending, Aaron truly embodied what a Best Ranger partner should be: loyal and supportive at the lowest and hardest of times.
The ambulance to take Nick to the hospital arrived, and Aaron helped load Nick onto the stretcher. As they were wheeling Nick away, he waved at us and gave us a thumbs up.
Chills, again.
The rest of us were kind of in a funk for the next hour or so, not sure what to do next. Everyone was just grieving. Sure, at the end of the day, Best Ranger is just a competition. It’s not real combat, it’s not life-or-death… but any time you invest years of your life into something, no matter the stakes, there is a cost. All we could do was support each other, and especially support Nick’s wife Katie and Aaron’s fiancée Audrey the best that we could.
We left and got lunch while we waited to hear from Katie at the hospital, or from Aaron, who was there too.
In the early afternoon, we heard from Katie. Nick and Aaron wanted to come back to the stadium to support the other team from their unit.
Are you shitting me?
These two guys were able to put their own crushing disappointment to the side to come back out within hours to re-invest their enthusiasm into another team.
Talk about character.
I heard crutches on the pavement before I turned around and saw Nick. There they were walking towards us, still in their sweaty uniforms, with the addition of a thick hip-to-ankle brace on Nick’s right leg, and some crutches.
More hugs, and more pity-deflection from the two of them.
Just like Aaron, some of the first words out of Nick’s mouth were “did you see team #38? They’re crushing it.” It was just so inspiring.
For the next few hours, we found a table and some chairs at the 4th Ranger Training Battalion to decompress over some beers with Nick, Aaron, and their spouses.
Amidst the conversation we were having to keep their minds off of the situation, I couldn’t help but to just be impressed and inspired by the fact that these two even wanted to sit and hang out with us right then. I just knew how much work and preparation they had put in, and no one would have faulted them if they just wanted to grieve alone and away from people. But, because we had flown in from other states to watch, they acted with an almost duty-like obligation to spend some time with us.
Loyal, no matter what.
We took a few hours to separate, and after repeatedly telling them not to, they insisted on going out to dinner with us. By the end of the meal, they were both falling asleep at the table due to the overwhelming exhaustion - not having slept since Thursday night.
On Sunday, we all woke up with heavy hearts - but the only thing to do was to move forward. Overnight, Katie and her mom had stayed up well past midnight printing new “Team 38” T-shirts, the other team from the same unit as Aaron and Nick. The father of one of the Team 38 competitors later told us that it brought him to tears seeing Nick and Aaron show up on Sunday morning wearing T-shirts in support of their other teammates.
That team finished the competition that afternoon in fourth place, a higher finish than either Nick or Aaron had ever achieved. Unsurprisingly, neither of them expressed any kind of jealousy, and greeted that team at the finish line with huge hugs, “I’m so proud of you’s,” and of course some Twisted Teas.
That’s the kind of men these two are, and that’s what I truly believe this competition is about.
I believe that years ago when this competition was formed, the reason it was decided to make the format two-man teams and not individual competitors is because nothing in the Army is ever done alone.
That is what I miss most about my time in the military. No matter what - through the highest of highs and the lowest of lows, somebody is always by your side that you can count on.
This competition can not be won by one outstanding performer. It takes two men to hold each other accountable, pick up each other’s slack, inspire and motivate, and ultimately bring out the best in each other.
In any competition, there can only be one winning team, and for those not standing at the top of the podium at the end of day three - that is when you need your partner the most. When everything is going right, it’s easy to be a good partner. It’s when the wheels fall off and tragedy strikes that you find out your partner’s true character.
These two exemplified everything that the Army stands for this past weekend when it comes to character, resilience, and teamwork.
In most years, only the winners of the Best Ranger Competition are etched in history.
This year, I think that anyone in A.J. McClung stadium that day will remember what they saw from team #37, CPT Aaron Arturi and SFC Nicholas Whitney.
Rangers Lead The Way.
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Until next time,
Reid
Reid - you really captured the emotion of the event. Even though I am thousands of miles away from Fort Moore, I felt like I was there. Really proud of all the Soldiers.