Open letter to Spartan’s Joe De Sena & Tough Mudder’s Giles Chater

Open Letter from a Tough Mudder

Today I found out that Clinton Jackson and Sean Corvelle are either at few events this year or no longer with Tough Mudder at all. I don’t know what “Coach” Kyle Railton’s status is, but throughout 2022 until today, I’ve only seen him at World’s Toughest Mudder.

Tough Mudder isn’t just mud and metal and wood and rope and headbands. It’s the people. Tough Mudder has an amazing and large community following and Sean, Clinton, and Coach are at the heart of it. Sean makes you feel Iike you can do anything. Clinton makes you feel like you’re coming home, and Coach reminds you to have fun while doing it. I’ve lost count of how many people I’ve spoken to at events and online who were encouraged to run Tough Mudder because of stories about them or video clips of them doing what makes Tough Mudder so flipping awesome.

These men are largely responsible for making  the Tough Mudder brand, and for gathering and inspiring the amazing community that surrounds it. They are the core of our Mudder family, and a large part of what keeps so many of us coming back over and over, year after year, and traveling all over the country for events to be a part of that family, and around the world to seek and spread that community feeling.

This gutting of Tough Mudder’s essence is exactly the sort of thing many Mudders such as myself were afraid of when Spartan bought Tough Mudder. I always felt a mild aversion to Spartan, but I figured that was just some base tribalism seeping into my thoughts. Now that I’ve run a couple of Spartan events, I understand that feeling did have an underlying cause. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think Spartan events are bad, but they *are* soulless. There’s no hype. There are no officials engaging with participants. There is nobody reminding everyone to have fun, to take care of each other, or to be good people. The atmosphere is bland, and I found no sense of a community. I have run OCR in countries where I don’t speak the language, and I’ve never felt as alone as when I was at a Spartan event in the US. Please don’t destroy the Tough Mudder experience I love and turn it into just another bland, soulless, Spartan event full of people who don’t care about each other and aren’t encouraged to do otherwise.

Tough Mudder needs Sean and Clinton and Coach. The brand needs them. The Legionnaires and their Mudder family love them and come to see them. We’re probably not coming back as often nor getting many others to sign up if they’re gone.

Joe, you bought Tough Mudder. Now please save it and keep it, and maybe let it into your soul.