Market Driven
While the planet's greatest athletes were going head-to-head in London, another series of competitions on Sunday established the top sportsman of a much smaller jurisdiction: Wall Street. More than 100 financial workers participated at Columbia's Wien Stadium in the RBC Decathlon, a charity fund-raiser that pits participants against one another in NFL-combine-inspired events such as bench press, pull-ups (above) and vertical jump.
The winner was Barclays Capital analyst Mark Rubin, a 26-year-old former Penn State safety, who was competing for the first time. For topping a field that included a raft of other former Division I athletes—including All-America Florida distance runner Stephen Zieminski, All-America USC sprinter Jason Price and Columbia linebacker Justin Nunez, the defending champ—Rubin received a trophy, a tailored suit and a bottle of champagne.
But the greatest haul went to the Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, which took in $1.2 million from the participants' rivalrous philanthropy—easily doubling the 2011 event's total.
"We all love to compete, whether it's cards or Monopoly or business," Rubin says. "Here it's a very supportive environment, but everybody loves to win."
PHOTO
MARC FADER (PULL-UP EVENT)