Best Ranger competitors reach for land after completing a swim in Victory Pond. Photo by Marty Skovlund, Jr./Coffee or Die.
From April 12 to 14, 2019, 54 two-man teams competed in the 36th annual David E. Grange Best Ranger Competition for 60 continuous hours of running, shooting, ruck marches, and climbing. The teams came from across the U.S. Army, U.S. Air Force, and U.S. Marine Corps, but they all had one thing in common: the prestigious black-and-gold Ranger tab.
If you couldn’t make it down to Fort Benning, Georgia, to watch these elite athlete-warriors duke it out, don’t worry — Coffee or Die was there to capture the whole thing. In the latest video in our series that has taken you from the battlefields of Afghanistan to the streets of Normandy, we follow Best Ranger competitors through obstacle courses and up dizzying heights for 10 action-packed minutes of in-your-face coverage that you definitely don’t want to miss.
Check it out, and don’t forget to leave a comment on the video about where you want Coffee or Die to go next!
Marty Skovlund Jr. is the founding editor of Coffee or Die Magazine. As a journalist, Marty has covered the Standing Rock protest in North Dakota, embedded with American special operation forces in Afghanistan, and broken stories about the first females to make it through infantry training and Ranger selection. He has also published two books, appeared as a co-host on History Channel’s JFK Declassified, and produced multiple award-winning independent films.
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