The First and Only Global League for Professional Tag! 🏃♂️ #KeepChasing #DontGetCaught
World Chase Tag® is the world’s first and only global competitive Tag organisation. Over the past eight years we’ve gone from casual Meetups in Hyde Park to international competitions that have received hundreds of millions of views. Our Chase Tag® comps are contested by the best Parkour athletes and Ninja Warrior competitors from around the globe and our footage has featured on ESPN, NBC Sports, L'Équipe, Channel 4, Fuji TV, CBS, BBC and many more.
Spoiler alert -------------- - - - - Plenty more stories to come, but this one needs to be told because Kyle came through BIG for the team by risking his health (which directly effects his job and opportunities as a stuntman) and his reputation in WCT (especially if this story goes untold). --- Man … the amount of plot twists and obstacles we faced on the road to worlds was mind blowing, and one of the biggest was Kyle injuring his hamstring 3 weeks before the event in a freak accident slipping on the sisters while wearing his back up shoes because his primaries were falling apart. He worked hard to heal quickly but couldn’t full sprint or use all of his tools (this can cause major hiccups when you hit unexpected dead ends in the continuums you’ve trained into your reactions for long periods of time). I also had a severe ankle injury and couldn’t get my ROM back in time so I was at about 60-70% of my skill level and also had to rework so many of my reactions/continuums to fit within those constraints. While I felt very uneasy about having to play under these conditions, I told Kyle I would never ask him to risk his health (would greatly impact his job) so it was his decision alone to what degree he would play. I had to come to a place of acceptance that I would have to fill that support role to give other players rest and maintain optimal pairings by at least just getting my tags. Because I was injured and unable to train for a couple months, I also decided one of the best ways I could serve the team was by leaning into a coaching role for the first time with Hollywood. I had some fun with digging deeper into the science of pairings (the mostly unexplored chess game played off the quad). I built a system of simulating mock matches based on my picks and variations of what I predicted the other teams would do, automating evasion probability outcomes and rest times for each athlete in between their chases (allowing us to specifically train cardio around specific targets for pairing chain breaking strats), etc. This helped me unearth a very interesting dynamic of optimal / sub optimal pairings chains & loops through flowcharts, how to set up key blocks and open doors for evasions working up stream, how to burn their best chasers back to back to leave an open door, how to use chain breakers often at the expense of cardio/stamina in order to pull the match out of the other team’s optimal chain loops and back into ours, etc. Kyle was on the fence up until the comp began, so I had to build two versions, one with him and one without. A hilarious realization we had was that if we could lead other teams to believe Kyle wasn’t injured, we could play a piece of what I call the “macro reputation game” and at least reduce the amount of times their best chasers were put on the board. We unfortunately didn’t think of this soon enough and so there were some rumors and suspicions going around that Kyle was injured. This meant we had to organize our first two matches in a way that made sense that Kyle wouldn’t play so we could at least get this effect going into the Ugen match. He told me he was still on the fence up until the comp began, and unfortunately in our 30 min practice before the event he had some issues amping it up to full speed and afterwards his hamstring got worse. I didn’t play in the Eco threads match solely to save everything I had that day for Ugen. The night before day 2, Kyle and I had gone over the variations in flow charts which led to the second major realization, and one that made us giddy with laughter. It was the scenario where Kyle would play as safely as he could with the primary purpose of being bait throughout the rest of the tournament. This would help us set in motion some of our optimal pairing chains / loops while also giving needed rest if our players needed a couple more chases to be ready. He was very unlikely to score points but was at least confident enough he could tag some players. An amazing by product would be silencing any rumors or suspicions that Kyle was injured so that if he wasn’t able to keep going beyond the Ugen match, we would at least still be able to keep the ruse going and reduce the amount of play time of other teams’ best chasers waiting on the sidelines for Kyle to play. This was the most entertaining branch of reality and I could see that it had also gripped Kyle the way it had me. Right before the Ugen match, Kyle came to me and said he had been thinking it over and was ready for this branch of reality. After we laughed like school children hiding while waiting to spring a prank, we pulled it together and adjusted accordingly. Kyle said he’d play each match by ear and at maximum could give us one time in per match, which was perfect because even if we couldn’t effectively use him as bait each match or if we could accomplish our optimal pairing chains / loops by other means, this meant we needed to play him in at least once per match to keep the ruse going to reduce the amount of times their top chasers were put on the board in upcoming matches. It was an absolutely epic moment when Ugen took the bait and played Orlando on Kyle. As Orlando stepped up to the starter plate, in my head I was jumping up and down in celebration but had to contain myself because Haroon is a very smart man and I was worried he would pull Orlando off the starter plate if he saw me even crack a smile hahah so all I could hear were Gabe’s words in my head, “chill chi chill chi chill chill chill” I don’t actually know what my face looked like but I think I grabbed some water to take a drink and distract myself. When the buzzer sounded, all was set in motion, and the rest is history. Big ups to Ugen for bringing such a solid squad that required our absolute best. And big ups to the rest of Hollywood who carried the boats after the massive curveball that was Kyle’s injury. The only way any of this worked out is because we had such a solid crew where we could trust everyone to hit their marks. SODERDOGS! But the biggest of ups to Kyle who risked his health and reputation for the greater good of the team and provided ample laughter down this unexpected branch of reality! There is always opportunity in crisis. The obstacles in our path define the path, what stands in the way becomes the way.
I can look at crime statistics and tell you without even seeing the rest of this and know for a fact that white girls can absolutely NOT get away from black guys chasing them.
This is marvellous! 50 years ago, I would have fancied myself at this game. We used to call it 'pirates' - all the school gym equipment was set out (including ropes); mats connected the equipment and you were not allowed to use the floor(except where the mats were). It was unacceptably dangerous by today's standards and resulted in more than one broken arm. Sorry, Colin.
