Army 1st Lt. Andrew Winski, left, and Sgt. Matthew Dunphy of the 75th Ranger Regiment hug briefly after crossing the finish line to win the 2024 Best Ranger Competition on Fort Moore, Ga., on Sunday, April 14, 2024. Their victory handed the Ranger Regiment its fourth consecutive victory in the grueling, three-day military skills challenge. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)

FORT MOORE, Ga. — On the 40th anniversary of the Army’s Best Ranger Competition, the team sporting No. 40 took home the top prize Sunday, grabbing the fourth straight victory for the service’s elite 75th Ranger Regiment in the grueling three-day military skills contest.

First Lt. Andrew Winski and Sgt. Matthew Dunphy held their M4 carbines high over their heads as they crossed the finish line outside Fort Moore’s National Infantry Museum, hugging briefly before dipping their arms and heads in an ice bath. The pair of Ranger infantrymen said winning the contest was important to the special operations regiment, which holds higher-than-typical standards for physical fitness and mental fortitude among its 3,000-some troops.

“It means a lot,” Winski said, shortly after completing the final buddy run event and locking in the victory. “Mostly for my partner — I didn’t want to let him down, and we didn’t want to let the regiment down. Really, just truly grateful that the regiment gave us this opportunity to come down, train and compete and show the [rest of the] Army what the Army’s Ranger Regiment is and … what kind of Rangers we produce.”

Best Ranger competitors drop crowbars after breaching a door obstacle during the second day of the Army’s annual Best Ranger Competition on Saturday, April 13, 2024, at A.J. McClung Stadium in downtown Columbus, Ga. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)

The Lt. Gen. David E. Grange Best Ranger Competition headlines Fort Moore’s annual Infantry Week events, which also include the Army’s annual International Sniper Competition, its Best Mortar Competition and its Lacerda Cup combatives tournament. Rangers from the 75th Ranger Regiment won the sniper and mortar competitions last week.

The Best Ranger Competition is considered by some to be the Army’s Super Bowl. It pits 55 two-man teams of Ranger School graduates in a slew of back-to-back, day-and-night challenges meant to test their physical fitness, mental capacity and willingness to continue to work under dire conditions that include little sleep and food, organizers said. Competitors jump out of helicopters, navigate multiple obstacle courses, ruck marches, swims and runs, and showcase military tactics and shooting.

Army Capts. Chandler Ramirez and Logan Storie of the 7th Infantry Division jump out of a Black Hawk helicopter into Victory Pond during the final day of the Army’s annual Best Ranger Competition on Sunday, April 14, 2024, at Fort Moore, Ga. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)

Sgt. 1st Class Michael Brown navigates a rope obstacle during the final day of the Army’s annual Best Ranger Competition on Sunday, April 14, 2024 on Fort Moore, Ga. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)

Army 1st Lt. Andrew Winski navigates an obstacle during the final day of the Army’s annual Best Ranger Competition on Sunday, April 14, 2024, on Fort Moore, Ga. Winski, a platoon leader in the 2nd Battalion, 75th Ranger Regiment, went on to win the competition with his partner, Sgt. Matthew Dunphy. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)

“We want to build champions, we want to build people who are better than anybody else in what we do every day,” Gen. James Mingus, the service’s vice chief of staff, said Sunday at the event’s finish line. “At the end of the day … you have got to be at the top of your game physically and intellectually and mentally — you’ve got to be at the top of your game to pull all those three things together, which sets [Best Ranger] apart from any other long-endurance event that’s out there, because when you look at the military technical and tactical components that they have to bring in, to be able to get through these … three days, it’s pretty amazing.”

Organizers built some of the events for this year’s competition with a nod to the Ranger regiment’s history and the 80th anniversary of the Rangers’ legendary efforts during World War II to capture German defense positions on D-Day along Pointe du Hoc, about 3 miles west of Omaha Beach, said Maj. Gen. Curtis Buzzard, who commands Fort Moore and its Maneuver Center of Excellence. During the second day of Best Ranger, competitors climbed a rock wall and practiced multiple breaching techniques at A.J. McClung Stadium in downtown Columbus, Ga, to honor that historic Ranger mission, Buzzard said.

Army 1st Lt. Patrick Sutherland and 1st Lt. Colin Johnson of the 75th Ranger Regiment rappel down a wall during the final day of the Army’s annual Best Ranger Competition on Sunday, April 14, 2024, at Fort Moore, Ga. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)

A Best Ranger competitor climbs a rock wall obstacle during the second day of the Army’s annual Best Ranger Competition on Saturday, April 13, 2024, at A.J. McClung Stadium in downtown Columbus, Ga. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)

“I think it kind of reinforces the legend of the 75th Ranger Regiment in terms of the Pointe du Hoc assault when you think about kind of fighting on the beach, the obstacles and then climbing — it’s a really neat part of the history of Rangers,” he said. “We really wanted this year to focus on that history.”

For Winski, 25, and Dunphy, 26, the challenges proved manageable as they took the lead by the end of the first day and never looked back. It was the first time competing for both Rangers, who have each served deployments with the regiment.

The pair first met in January when they were selected by regimental leaders to compete for a spot in the competition, they said. They quickly found they worked together seamlessly and built a “lifelong friendship,” they said.

A Best Ranger competitor crawls through a razor wire obstacle during the second day of the Army’s annual Best Ranger Competition on Saturday, April 13, 2024, at A.J. McClung Stadium in downtown Columbus, Ga. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)

Army 1st Lt. Nicholas Cefalu and 1st Lt. Jacob Bohnemann, of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, cross the finish line at the 2024 Best Ranger Competition at Fort Moore, Ga. on Sunday, April 14, 2024. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)

Sgt. 1st Class Michael Brown shoots a target during the final day of the Army’s annual Best Ranger Competition on Sunday, April 14, 2024, on Fort Moore, Ga. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)

Winski is a platoon leader from the regiment’s 2nd Battalion at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, Wash., who graduated from the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, N.Y., according to the Army. Dunphy is a fire team leader at the regiment’s 1st Battalion at Hunter Army Airfield in Savannah, Ga. He is a graduate of the University of Tennessee, where he swam breaststroke events for the swim team.

“Your team leaders, you want them to be hungry like dogs on a leash and then you have to rein them in,” Dunphy said of the pair’s working dynamic. “So, Andrew reins me in. He’s a lot more thoughtful than me, so … I just do whatever he tells me, and I think that’s one way that we paired together really well.”

Several competitors said events such as the night land navigation, a long swim and a long ruck march proved the most difficult during the competition. But Winski and Dunphy said they were not surprised or underprepared for anything the organizers threw at them.

Army Capt. Tanner Potter reaches out to touch the Ranger sign at Victory Pond during the final day of the Army’s annual Best Ranger Competition on Sunday, April 14, 2024, on Fort Moore, Ga. (Corey Dickstein/Stars and Stripes)

“We’ve both been in stressful situations before, and we recognize that a three-day competition stateside isn’t that stressful in the grand scheme of things, and we know what we’ve prepared to do,” Winski said. “We [went] out there and executed and kept a lighthearted sense for most of the time, but we also know when to crank it up and really get serious for whatever the task may be.”

Ultimately, the lieutenant said, the competition was “just another day in the office.”