WATCH: ‘Sperm Racing’ Event in L.A. Raises Awareness of Male Health and Fertility

A “sperm race” event was hosted in Los Angeles on Friday after a 17-year-old student and entrepreneur came up with the idea to highlight men’s health and male fertility.

Eric Zhu, who got help from investors for the project, said the goal is to make it more of a sport, ABC 7 reported Monday.

The two male competitors were given weekly payments to train for the so-called race, and the article said, “The group has what it calls a Sperm Racing Professional Sperm Analysis Kit, which measures concentration, motility, progressive motility, motile sperm concentration, and progressive motile sperm concentration.”

According to WION, the event at Hollywood Palladium was organized by four young Americans who raised over a million dollars to fund it.

“Quite literally, it was a head-to-head race between sperm samples from two healthy university students down an eight-inch (20 cm) long racetrack,” the outlet said. “Tristan Mykel, 20, a University of Southern California student competing under the nickname ‘Tristan Milker,’ was crowned the champion after beating 19-year-old University of California student Asher Proeger.”

However, the Free Press reported on Thursday the “sperm race” was prerecorded even though the outlet said it had been advertised as “live sperm racing.”

When the outlet asked Zhu if it was supposed to be a live event, he said, “Yes. Future ones will be live, right? Because we run the tests, right, in the lab, and then, this was like an hour beforehand. And then what we would do is we would deliver the footage to the production crew”:

An advertisement for the race shows the two contestants acting as if they are about to enter the boxing ring. However, the ring in this case features a microscope and a man wearing a lab coat:

According to Reuters, the “sperm racing” team pointed to the fact that fertility is declining across the nation with issues such as excessive drinking, the use of drugs, and a lack of sleep contributing to the problem:

The team built a microscopic racetrack that looks like the reproductive system.

During a recent interview, Zhu told News Nation, “What’s interesting is that how fast a sperm moves is actually correlated, it’s an accurate biomarker. So, the faster your sperm is the healthier you are.”

“So, the earlier you sleep, the better you eat, all correlate to the speed of your sperm which is kind of like making this health in a competition,” he stated:

One event attendee told ABC 7, “When you really think about it, we all won our own individual sperm races to get onto this planet, so it’s only fit that we make it a format that we can all watch and enjoy.”

It is important to note that President Donald Trump’s administration is reportedly considering ways to increase birth rates across the nation after it fell to a historic low in 2023, per Breitbart News.

“According to reports, one of the proposals to encourage women to have children includes a $5,000 baby bonus, which would be given to mothers after delivery of their child. Another proposal involves saving 30 percent of Fulbright program scholarships for those who are married or have children,” the outlet said.

“The administration is also considering a more educational approach, supposedly floating a government program that would help educate women about their cycles and, by consequence, have a better idea about their ovulation window and the ideal time to conceive,” it stated.