VAIL — In the sporting world, “combustion” arguably receives an unfair share of hyperbole. Games heat up, a shooter has a hot hand and, on a good day, your team is on fire.
In the real world, not so much. Fire, for the most part, is still considered a bad thing, especially when it’s afflicting a teammate.
Still, that didn’t stop the four-man squad from Denver’s South Metro Fire Department from laying down a blazing-fast time Sunday to win the relay portion of the Scott Firefighter Combat Challenge in Vail.
“This is our fitness test,” said firefighter Jesse Lewis, who co-captains the South Metro team with Nick Gravina. “We have to take it every year to keep our job, and we just take it to the next level.”
It’s no exaggeration to say every second counts in the life-and-death fight against fire. And as odd as it may seem to make a game of such a serious matter, the wildly popular Firefighter Combat Challenge series is rooted in science.
The contest, started in 1991 and making its way to the mountains of Colorado for the first time last week, showcases and promotes the abilities and athleticism of firefighters by simulating essential skills in a controlled environment.
There is no actual fire to put out, but contestants are required to suit up in about 50 pounds of appropriate attire, including a helmet, boots and air tank, before racing the clock up a five-story tower carrying a 42-pound hose pack, hoisting another 42-pound hose roll up a rope to the top of the tower and then sprinting back down. There, a “Keiser sled” awaits to simulate forcible entry as the firefighters use a 9-pound mallet to hammer a 160-pound steel beam a distance of 5 feet.
After running through a 140-foot slalom course, competitors pick up the nozzle of a charged fire hose and drag it 75 feet. It gains in weight from 140 to 240 pounds as the length of the water-filled hose increases. They spray down a target before the final task — dragging a 175-pound “victim” mannequin backward for 100 feet to the finish line.
“It’s the hardest two minutes in sports,” said Ryan Longhenry, who rounded out the South Metro squad with Scott Hegerty. The four-man team completed the traditional five-man relay in 1 minute, 17.98 seconds.
Science behind feats
Although there may be a few downhill ski racers lurking around Colorado willing to dispute Longhenry’s statement, Firefighter Challenge creator Dr. Paul Davis has the stats to support the claim. A former faculty member at the University of Maryland’s School of Public Health, Davis initially received a federal grant from U.S. Fire Administration (now FEMA) to develop and validate a job-related physical performance examination for firefighters in 1975.
“We basically looked at the physiological requirements for firefighting in the context of hiring and that sort of thing,” Davis said. “It wasn’t our intention to think about it being a sports event. We were looking at oxygen uptake kinetics and blood lactates and core temperature, and all these sort of arcane scientific measurements so we could publish research in these scholarly journals.”
The groundbreaking research on what Davis now refers to as “industrial athletes” ultimately evolved to a wide array of sports, be it Olympic athletes training in Colorado Springs or pro prospects trying out at the NFL combine.
“The original hypothesis of the research study was that we could develop a set of fitness dimensions that would be predictive of job performance,” Davis said. “To be able to develop a statistical model, basically I can take these measures of fitness, like aerobic capacity, and all these other neuromuscular functions, and then I can determine how well you’ll do on the job. That’s being done routinely in all sports now.”
It didn’t take long for the competitive nature of the firefighters to rise to the surface, however, prompting the creation of the Combat Challenge, more or less in the mold of televised lumberjack or “world’s strongest man” contests. There are more than 20 contests held throughout the United States annually, as well as competition throughout Europe, China and New Zealand scheduled in the series this fall. The world championship is in November in Myrtle Beach, S.C.
“We are always competing,” said Stacy Billapando, a firefighter out of Colorado Springs who captains the reigning women’s world champion relay team from the Air Force Academy.
Coloradans near top
Billapando and teammates Lisa Smith, Elaine Perkins, Andrea Caraway and Jessica Morehouse just missed establishing the women’s relay world record at the Vail contest, finishing in 1:47.15 at an elevation of 8,150 feet. The current women’s relay record is 1:47.12, set by a Canadian team in 2003. The men’s relay mark of 1:08.28 was set in 2005 by a team from Travis Air Force Base. Juliet Draper of Colorado Springs holds the fastest women’s individual time of 1:48.41.
“We’re getting to the point where Colorado has the most teams competing in this event,” Gravina said, recognizing squads from Englewood, Westminster, Air Force Academy, Wescott, Colorado Springs, Vail and South Metro, among others.
The success of Colorado firefighters among the national pool is also somewhat comforting for local residents who came out to root on the teams beneath a hillside of beetle-kill tinder and gain a greater appreciation of the physical demands of firefighting. Competitors spend months training for the event and winners receive nothing more than a trophy.
“These are the firefighting skills that we should be able to do,” Perkins said.
“We take it more seriously because it’s our job, and we have a little more to prove with our peers here,” Billapando added. “But I’ve competed in other things, and this is the hardest thing I’ve ever done.”
Scott Willoughby: 303-954-1993 or swilloughby@denverpost.com
