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Ultimate Box League Napoli: the first licensed event in the heart of Naples

Barbara Bier

What happens when you combine passion, breathtaking scenery, Southern hospitality and three full days of CrossFit®?

Well, an unprecedented race!

What if we told you that all this will materialize soon? Already! because theUltimate Box League Napoli (UBL) is an event organized by two very special Neapolitan boys: Bruno and Manuela. 

Their peculiarity lies in the fact that are not "the usual” CrossFit® event organizers, they are not Box Owners and, in real life, they work with something else: they are both aerospace engineers!!!

Are also competitive athletes, that is clear, and theirs immoderate passion and experience as athletes has led them to create an event that is a 360° experience for everyone: competitors, vendors and, of course, spectators.

Manuela
Bruno

 

Will 3 days dedicated to fitness and the community, where the best 350 athletes from all over Europe will compete in five workouts which will decide the winner.

Now we explain everything in detail!

Ultimate Box League: what the competition will be like in Naples

The competition will be marked by two moments: an online qualification phase which, once passed, will allow access to the second phase of the competition, the live event, which will take place in Naples, Campania, on 21,22, 23 and 2023 July XNUMX at the Mostra D'Oltremare, one of the largest exhibition complexes in Italy.

I'm already at third edition and the highlights for 2023 are many! Especially for the category experience, which will be open to everyone, even newbies. No special skills or heavy loads will be required. So even those who want to experience the thrill of living a competition can do it easily!

And that's not all: all categories will compete on all three days of competition! It will be quite challenging, in short 😉

Technical info

Event name: Ultimate Box League Naples

Social page: @ultimate_box_league_napoli

Registration opening: 20/02/2023

Registration deadline: 02/04/2023

When will it be live?? 3 days of competition on 21 - 22 - 23 July

Where will the Live be? Mostra d'Oltremare – Naples

Date of qualifications?  There will be 2 online qualifiers from March 26th to April 9th

The WODs will come out together, there will be 4 scores and you will have 2 weeks to post the videos.

What categories can enter?

INDIVIDUAL:

TEAM OF 3

Prices?

Individuals: €25 qualifications – €95 live

Teams: €75 qualifying – €285 live

How to register? To register, just click on IG page link in bio and follow the procedure on Judgerules!

How many registered athletes go live? 346 athletes go live

How many workouts will there be? They guarantee 4 workouts for everyone, but they are quite long WODs so as to give the athletes an intense racing experience! In total, each athlete will compete for about 60 minutes of workouts over the three days, in a spectacular location where only the best will access the final. They will be divided into 1 wod on Friday, two on Saturday and the other two on Sunday.

Highlights?

Who are last season's elite winners?

Last year they were only teams of 2:

What “big” names will we see in this edition?

Of already confirmed we will see: Edoarto Talon, Enrico Zenoni, Federico Marra, Augusto Gesso, Michele la Mura.

For the Elite team category: Martina Borrini together with coach Teo (Matteo Agnello) and Leo Barneschi; but also Cecilia Proietti, Raffaele Ruocco and Tommaso Truppo.

The words of the Organizers: Manuela and Bruno

Guys: you are aerospace engineers, but also CrossFitters! How did your passion start? How many years have you been doing CrossFit®?

Manuela: Yes, I am a PhD in Industrial Engineering and a researcher at the University of Naples, with an inordinate passion for sport and, as I always say, CrossFit® is my soul mate in the form of physical activity.

I've been a sportswoman almost forever! My mom says I was three the first time I asked her to sign up for artistic gymnastics, but I was too young to start any classes.

I practiced artistic gymnastics at a competitive level from 5 to 15 years old, then I stopped because the training times weren't compatible with studying.

At the age of 25 I passed by a CrossFit® box in the gym where I was enrolled and I was curious about all those people who did very strange things in my eyes! After a few months I entered that box; I still remember the first workout I did: the Helen. And I never left!

At the moment I combine work, UBL organization and training as a competitive athlete with unthinkable times, but anyone in my situation knows how worth it!

Bruno: I join Manuela! I have always been an eclectic personality, inclined towards different arts and disciplines. When I met CrossFit® in 2014 I immediately fell in love with its variety of movements and declinations.

I started practicing it the following year and I haven't stopped since then (except for the long breaks due to studying).

In fact, we currently manage the organization of the Ultimate Box League together balancing work, training and personal life!

In fact we understood how much passion you put into organizing races. Can you tell us which ones inspired you the most? We know you even went to the Games for inspiration 😉

Manuela: We started creating UBL in 2020, just before the pandemic… which made us wait a while before seeing our project come to fruition. Our idea was born from the desire to create an event where the experience of the competition was only a part of the actual experience for the athlete to live.

In fact, in 2017, I decided to fly to Madison to see the CrossFit® Games. That was the first year the Games were held at the Alliant Energy Center in Wisconsin and the experience was, for me, mind blowing.

I entered the arena during the 1RM workout of snatch elite individual and I was struck by the atmosphere. And that atmosphere still represents the target of our vision today.

In CrossFit® the public is an integral part of the event and we try to recreate a competition field where the athletes can feel the warmth of the public all around.

Furthermore, every year, our focus also embraces the athlete's entire experience outside the competition arena: athlete village, food village and vendor area. We want athletes and spectators to have an unforgettable experience, with quality workouts, top level athletes, precise timelines and lots of fun and community.

Bruno: I just add that an event of any kind, due to the large number of interlocutors who take part in it, is like a huge system made up of various subsystems all interconnected, nothing very different from the design of an aircraft.

For us it is essential to travel to learn about new events and get new ideas to work on, for this reason every year we visit different events both in Europe and outside the old continent.

However, CrossFit® competitions are not our only point of reference; if this were the case there would be no progress, in fact it is essential for us to take a cue from any major event to transfer and adapt techniques and ideas to our world.

So let's summarize: why should an athlete sign up for your competition? What's the highlight?

Bruno: I could tell you about the largest and most well-equipped location in Italy or about our vast warm-up area, almost bigger and more equipped than the competition field, or even about our immense athlete village where athletes and their companions can rest and enjoy the show…but it's not that's why I would sign up.

Participating in the Ultimate Box League means taking part in a huge, ever-growing party and supporting the competition that all of us Italians will be proud of in a few years!

Manuela: Exactly, it's like Bruno says! Our strong point is in the experience of the event that we want to give to the athlete.

We organizers have a vision of the Ultimate Box League that leads us, every year, to invest more and more in the 360° event. The base is the competition field and, for this, we require: punctuality, quality judging, challenging workouts in every domain and high-level athletes.

Furthermore, we believe it is essential that the competition field is level, on a surface on which drops can be made and without discontinuity, which is difficult for outdoor competitions, but which our location fully reflects.

On this basis, every year we build a framework that allows the athlete to experience a memorable weekend. We manage the athlete village in detail to allow athletes to stop in the shade, near the competition field and rest between one workout and another. Every year we enrich the CrossFit®® village more and more where this year it will be possible to find practically all the best-known brands in the sector and do collateral activities.

Then guys, we are in Naples! So there will be typical cuisine directly on the competition field as well as more fit dishes.

Furthermore, we have also thought of all the male and female athletes who are accompanied by their families to reserve a space for them in a quiet area where they can rest in the sun and cool off. In short, we travel many races both as athletes and as spectators because we want to give our guests everything they need!

It's a beautiful thought! With all this research you have arrived at the third edition. Can you tell us the news? What is there to expect?

Bruno: There are a lot of news! Those who follow us on Instagram have already discovered some of them.

I think it's worth spending a few words on the new UBL stage: the race moves to the center of the city of Naples, in one of the most exclusive locations in Italy: the Mostra d'Oltremare.

The immense urban park offers a wide range of services and facilities to meet the needs of athletes and spectators, including a large competition area, an Olympic swimming pool, a solarium as well as convenient and easily accessible parking.

Furthermore, being located in the center of Naples, the location offers the opportunity to discover the city and its culture during your stay.

For all other news, we refer you to our official website and to ours Instagram page.

Manuela: Let's not forget to mention that this year we received the official CrossFit® designation by officially becoming a 2023 CrossFit® Licensed event.

Another novelty are the categories: we have gone from Team of two to Individual and Team of three.

We also know that you are listed in the AFFI functional fitness competition circuit. How was this partnership born?

Manuela: The partnership with AFFI was born during the first year of our competition when, we can say, we chose each other.

We fully embrace the AFFI philosophy in trying to get our discipline recognized and structured in Italy and we have been proudly part of the circuit since the first year.

Bruno: For us it is an indispensable reality to ensure cohesion in our sport. We support their project and we care about the fact that they are very present in the environment unlike other companies that deal with something else.

 Just to close, can you tell us about your future plans for this race?

Bruno: We have a five-year project that aims to bring Italy a point of reference for athletes from all over Europe.

Our goal is to make the event both a "means" to feed the CrossFit® community in Italy, i.e. to always make new boys and girls passionate about the sport, and an "end", i.e. to be the event awaited by all to test your limits!

Manuela: Exact! We want to create a competition that gives all top Italian athletes the chance to compete in their own country against all top level European athletes.

And that it also gives beginner athletes the possibility of living an all-encompassing and motivating experience that makes them even more passionate about this wonderful world.

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