In the latest Freeze vs. Random Dude race hosted by the Atlanta Braves, the spandex-clad super-runner made a fan eat dirt. There's no coming back from that kind of humiliation.
Welcome to Atlanta, Georgia, the city of blowing leads. It's here at SunTrust Park where, between innings at Braves home games, a mere mortal races a near-invincible runner in a turquoise spandex bodysuit and goggles, also known as the Freeze.
During Thursday's game against the Arizona Diamondbacks, the fan chosen to participate in that afternoon's "Beat the Freeze" contest did not, in fact, Beat the Freeze. He fell, as so many did before him, in the roughly 600-feet foot race on the outfield track at the Braves' stadium. No, like, he actually fell.
As per tradition, the fan was given a five-second head start on the Freeze. Now, despite his head start, the chances of any given fan beating the Freeze are very, very slim. We do not know why this is but will sum up the answer in one short word: physics. Also, the actual identity of the Freeze is Durran Dunn, a Jamaican track and field star and ex-D1 athlete.
What typically happens in these races is that the Freeze narrows the gap up until the very last stretch, when the Freeze breezes by the fan and wins. No sweat.
On Thursday, the Freeze was just about to catch up to the fan who was barreling toward the finish line when… kersplat. The fan trips, flails his arms, and faceplants into the dirt. The Freeze wins again.
Braves fan loses to the Freeze in utter humiliating fashion
A moment of silence for the fan who confidently thought he could beat the Freeze only to end the race with a mouth full of dirt.
The rest of the stadium could only watch with mingled shock, horror, and pity as the Freeze's competitor fell to the ground, his ego shaken, pride destroyed. There are some things humans simply cannot recover from, and this is one of those things.
Traumatized with shame, this fan will from henceforth watch Braves games from the solitary comfort of his own home. He will wake up from chilling nightmares of those big blue goggles, the sound of heavy breathing behind him — it's enough to make his blood run cold. He will drive to the office flinching with fear every time a light blue car appears in his side-view mirror. Therapy won't help. And at long last, when the Braves have won ten World Series championships and he thinks he has finally escaped the past and the torment, he's finally happy, he will be buried with a gravestone will forever read: "Ate dirt against the Freeze".
RIP indeed. While the origins of the "Beat the Freeze" race stem from a marketing campaign in which the Braves wanted to sell a certain blueberry frozen drink, we theorize that the city of Atlanta is so scarred by the 28-3 loss that they choose to relive it at every Braves home game. They stage a kind of rigged footrace between mortal and local legend in which the mortal jumps ahead to a sizeable lead early on only to see it slowly and cruelly erased by the Freeze.
"Beat the Freeze" came into fruition in 2017; the Falcons lost the Super Bowl that year. Some moments just haunt you forever.
