In the last sperm race of Friday night, the microscope set its sights on the swimmers secreted by USC’s Tristan “Milker” Wilcher — a sophomore majoring in arts, technology and the business of innovation — and UCLA’s Asher Proeger, who were screaming in large glass tubes at their sperm to swim faster. 

On the climactic final stretch of the race, a large screen displayed Proeger’s offspring gaining a burst of speed toward the goal. But it wasn’t enough to catch up to Wilcher’s sperm with a — literally microscopic — lead that won USC the first-ever sperm race. Loads of viscous white substance dropped onto Proeger’s head, and in celebration, a cannon splurted sperm-shaped confetti across the arena. 

It was a mix of excitement and awkwardness that marked that night. Audio hiccups, a competitor showing up late to their match and a halftime performance by Ty Dolla $ign were met with an enthusiastic crowd filled with mostly USC students rooting exclusively for Wilcher. 

Founder of Sperm Racing Eric Zhu said the purpose of the event was to try to turn health into an entertaining competition, using semen as a biomarker. 

“When you’re comparing your biomarkers against your friends, it’s really boring. You’re not going to go to your friends and say, ‘I have higher testosterone’ and stuff like that,” Zhu said. “We’re able to emulate the same thing. But sperm is one of these agro-biomarkers, where we use that to make it entertaining and incentivize people to be healthier.”

The competition had two matches, with YouTubers Noah Boat and Jimmy Zhang facing off before the title match between USC and UCLA in a best-of-three series. In what felt like a parody of a boxing match, the matches started with over-the-top entrances, a “checkup” with a doctor about the competitor’s health and masturbatory habits, rivalrous banter, and loads of sperm jokes. 

In the title match, Wilcher represented USC, and Proeger was for UCLA. Proeger was jeered at and mocked by the crowd, but slight remarks from Wilcher came with applause. 

An hour before the race, the racers needed to produce “the samples,” explained Zhu to the Daily Trojan before the match. On-site doctors prepared the swimmers for the race by diluting the samples, placing them in a centrifuge, and then narrowing down the millions of sperm cells to the hundred that would become the final racers for the big screen. 

After the sperm is processed, the contestants’ sperm was placed onto a microscopic racetrack and a microfluidic device. The sperm was then traced onto a 3D object for the big screens, where the audience saw actual sperm haploids wriggling on the race track.   

And after a countdown, the sperm were off to the races. The mini circuit was composed of two tracks separate from each other, with slight twists and curves, which the racers navigated through to a singular finish line. Separate screens were placed for sections of the track, allowing a doctor operating the microscope to flip through them as the sperm cells moved along. 

Antony Bitar came to Los Angeles to watch the sperm race with a friend and said the event exceeded his expectations.  

“I came in with no expectations at all,” Bitar said. “We had no idea what this was, and they put on a good show. It was super entertaining. The crowd was hyped up. I mean, I lost my voice; I was screaming the whole time.” 

Zhang’s sperm decisively won him the first race of the night, crossing the finish line screens ahead of Boat’s seed. 

YouTuber Ryan “Rhino” Burton, one of the co-hosts of the sperm race, also had no expectations going into the event but was happy with how it turned out. 

“There [were] a lot of smart people running it and com[ing] up with the idea, but it was a very short-notice event, [and] they still pulled it off,” Burton said. “I was speaking to certain people, and they were saying they had fun.”

When asked where the money came from to create the sperm race, Zhu said it came from “a couple [of] funds,” but said the team had “no idea” how to make money.

“I honestly don’t know how we’re going to make money,” Zhu said. “By the way, for this event, we’re losing $1.4 million … We’re $1.4 million down the hole to make jizz race. Very sad.”