Muscled Israeli CrossFitters Rock Gender-Neutral Sports Bras At Championships

"Our competitors are an amazing example of how CrossFit brings people together and creates new friends."

From: NewNowNext

The hunky Israeli team competing at the World CrossFit Regional Championships in Madrid last week made a powerful statement in support of gender-neutral clothing, ripping off their shirts to reveal the multicolored sports bras they were sporting underneath.

A commentator narrating the bold reveal, which happened mid-competition as one of the men bent down to perform a snatch, called it “the craziest thing he’d ever seen.”

Another noted it was “an interesting choice of attire for…the male athletes” and “very gender neutral.”

“Who cares what they’re lifting, they’re getting the crowd to cheer based on their attire,” the commentators continued. “I think this is the first time I have done any competition where I have seen the male athletes rocking the sports bra. So good on them.”

“I’ve never seen anything like it and if you back it up with lifting like that, I’m a happy camper. You can wear whatever you want if you’re throwing this kind of weight around.”

Some wondered if the gesture was somehow a celebration of Tel Aviv Pride, which kicked off Sunday in the Israeli capital, but it turns out the guys — Avi Yona, Ram Dover, and Gil Lior — just wanted an extra pop of color in their wardrobe.

“We wanted to have fun and show everyone that CrossFit is more than just muscles and lifting heavy stuff,” the team’s manager, Tal Mager, told Mic in an email. “We wanted to add some color to a very serious event. Our box is a community and our competitors are an amazing example of how CrossFit brings people together and creates new friends.”

But as Mic’s Evan Ross Katz points out, the real gift here is the commentator’s reaction:

“Perhaps more notable then the gesture itself was the way in which it was received, not just by rabid pandemonium from the crowd, but by the men commenting on the competition, who rather than trivialize the gesture, normalized the act by keeping the focus on the sport at play. Smart, considering the team crushed it.”

Check out a video of the major moment below: