Every year our editors hit the gas to bring you the GQ Fitness Awards. We sweat the small stuff when it comes to performance fabrics, fitness watches, running shoes, protein powders, recovery tools, gym equipment—the list goes on as the miles tick up. It’s our time to shine—or at the very least schvitz a little. While we can’t help you bench three plates or instantly improve your marathon PR, we can—and do—insist that you work out with the best of the best when it comes to gym gear.
What does that entail this year? Spray-on running shoes that helped a marathoner win Boston. A pile of workout drip that is simultaneously high-performing and cool as shit. Bikes that make cranking down a dirt road feel less dusty. Pilates reformers. High-carb drinks. And, as you’d imagine, a new Apple Watch. Whether you get your fitness fix in a squat rack or on the road, in the ocean or on the golf course, the gear here will get you amped to get after it.
The GQ Fitness Awards Table of Contents
In case you’re looking for something specific:
Apparel and Accessories
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The Best Workout Tee
Ignore the trolls on Reddit: sweating through your jeans won’t yield “extremely sick fades.” So the NYC-based denim whizzes at 3sixteen devised a blessedly practical solution—a new line of hardy, discreet gym gear informed by the brand’s telltale attention to detail and years spent crafting some of the best jeans in the biz. You don’t, of course, need decades of industry experience to appreciate this pared-back tee, which incorporates Aerosilver yarns to keep this thing from ever smelling like you’ve been at the gym. All you need is a torso, a little over fifty bucks, and the resolve to spend less time on the internet and more time smashing PRs.
The Best Running Shorts
It’s always a nerve-wracking moment when a brand re-works a core lineup staple. So when, after a decade, Tracksmith released a new version of its bestselling Session short, there were bound to be gangs of angry cardio addicts with gnarly crew-sock tans roaming the streets if they messed it up. Good news: The new shorts are lighter, smoother, and now have well-designed pockets that make them much more suitable for everyday wear—but won’t get in the way of some blistering 800-meter repeats.
The Best Gym Shorts
We demand as much from our workout shorts as the next guy (unless the next guy is, like, Stephen Nedoroscik), but even by our standards Rec Gen’s Type 1 Decal Short checks every box and then some. The low-key Aussie brand cuts its flagship silhouette from a swishy, partially recycled fabric that wicks away sweat, offers ample ventilation, and handles complex HIIT sets without breaking a stitch. The 6-inch inseam might skew a little long for avowed short shorts enthusiasts, but it’s spot-on for everybody else.
The Best Workout Tank
When the heavy-lifters at Ten Thousand start thinking about a new product, they don’t hit the drawing board, they hit the gym—and the competition gets a little nervous. Exhibit A: their aptly named Versatile Tank, the result of a rigorous design process that pulls intel from expert athletes and Average Joes alike. Come for the flatlock seams, ultra-durable fabric, and odor-fighting silver ion finish, stay for the just-right silhouette and cooly industrial hues.
The Best Long-Sleeve Tee
It’s tricky to pinpoint when, exactly, running became stylish, but we have a nagging suspicion the design-minded Brooklynites at Bandit had a lot to do with it. You’ve probably felt the satisfaction of pushing through a grueling final mile, but the pros emphasize the importance of relaxing through every stride, too. Bandit’s blanket-soft long-sleeve makes enjoying the journey a breeze, thanks to an intentionally oversized fit and silky-smooth mesh construction. It’s a sleek act of next-gen performance wizardry, but it’s also just a righteous graphic tee you’ll be proud to rep running errands.
The Best Hoodie
Over the last decade or so, the hoodie went high-fashion. Where does that leave fellas looking for a reliably durable version without the designer logos or department-store markup? Hightailing it to Reigning Champ, of course. Vancouver’s foremost sweats specialist churns out heavy-duty athletic gear at prices that belie the craftsmanship involved—and its hero product lives atop our ranking of the genre for that exact reason. We could talk your ear off about its flatlock stitching or herringbone seam taping, but the real selling point is what you’d expect: a plush terry fabric heavier than your one-rep max.
The Best Compression Shorts
Since 2020, Running Order has carved out a niche hawking performance-oriented gear that looks killer on early-morning sprints—and even better stumbling out of the club a few hours prior. The brand’s compression shorts don’t skimp on the details—concealed belt loops, waterproof phone pouch, mesh side pockets—but their rave-kid sensibility masks a more refined design ethos: they’re cut from recycled Italian nylon and made right here in the USA.
The Best Joggers
On the days it’s too damn cold to lift in shorts, you’re going to want a pair of sweats. Don’t overthink it: Vuori’s performance joggers are a perennial category leader for good reason—implausibly soft, barely-there flexible, and just luxe enough to avoid raising eyebrows at brunch. Break the news to your rattier standbys gently.
The Best Sports Sunglasses
Article One’s aviator shades might promise a megawatt blast of movie-star glamour, but they’re expressly engineered for racking up miles. The secret ingredient is hexitate, a specialty resin that makes the frame more resistant to heavy-duty wear and tear. (Grippy ear and nose tabs prevent ‘em from slipping off, too). If you’re sick of getting active in iridescent wraparound sunnies, make like Gosling and try these out for size—but keep an eye out for rogue paparazzi along the way.
The Best Prescription Sports Sunglasses
If you’re a runner who reads GQ (howdy, and welcome back), District Vision needs little introduction. Ditto the brand’s NYC-ubiquitous Junya Racer shades. District Vision customers skew young, active, and achingly hip—less Strava, more Raya—but this year, the brand gifted a surprise to folks who’ve aged past their 20-20 vision: a prescription-ready version of its flagship frames. If aging is merely a matter of perspective, consider these your ticket to a long life in the fast lane.
The Best Workout Socks
Running socks, with their breathability and blister prevention, are important, but they’re not inspiring. From a glance, Near Earth’s Distance Sock might not be either, but then you slip on a pair and before you’ve even laced up your trainers you’re wondering where such a sock came from and why it feels so good inside a shoe. The answers: Germany, and a carefully engineered blend of just the right amount of lightweight compression and cushion, zoned anatomically so they’re where your foot needs them most, whether you’re one mile in or rounding out a marathon.
The Best Workout Underwear
Comfort is what matters most when it comes to your bottom layer and comfort is what Lululemon has perfected over nearly three decades of making clothing to move around in. Comfort, in this pair of briefs, comes in the form a lay-flat waistband that won’t chafe and bonded hems around the thighs that don’t hike themselves up into a bunch. And Luxtreme, a fabric that sounds foreign but translates to soft, silky, breathable, and sweat-wicking.
The Best Running Jacket
It’s a rare thing that the designer behind an item in our Fitness Awards is a designer who’s a CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund runner-up and no stranger to Paris Fashion Week. But the utility that’s a theme of Reese Cooper’s runway fare is distilled further in his active-oriented sub-brand Reese Cooper Outdoor Supply aka RCOS. Case in point: a jacket built like a classic track jacket with a mesh-lined poly shell but also adorned with enough pockets for whatever’s needed when you’re on the move.
The Best Tennis Shirt
Dress codes may vary from court to court, but even the staunchest abiders can’t argue with a top as made-for-tennis as this tee from Wilson. It’s airy, stretchy, fights odor, and yes, it comes in white. The downside: without a single scratchy seam in sight, you’ll have to find something else to blame when you keep dumping your backhand into the net.
The Best Tennis Short
The Boreas isn’t strictly a tennis short—Path Projects was founded to relay the best fabric tech to runners—but it’s got everything you’d want in a pair. Adequate pockets, for starters (including a cargo for spare balls). Plus lightweight Japanese ripstop fabric from Toray that stretches with all the lunging motions and flows when you’ve got to get back to baseline for a game-saving lob.
The Best Safety Vest
Truly dedicated runners don’t need credit for all those early mornings and late evenings putting in the work, but they do need to be seen. Hi-viz yellow and reflective striping is still the best when it comes to low-light road safety, and the minds at Miler did runners a favor by making it look cool for the very first time—and added some pockets for keys and fuel for good measure.
The Best Wet Suit
Patagonia is always tinkering with and improving its house recipe wetsuit formula, and the latest is easily the greatest. The new suits are 85% Yulex natural rubber, sustainably sourced to go easy on the environment, and they’re stretchier than ever so nothing need be sacrificed—neither Mother Earth nor your bottom turn stance—for a day in cold water.
Workout Shoes
The Best Lifting Shoe
We can’t claim that the secret to the perfect squat, clean, or deadlift is all in the footwear, but a dedicated pair of lifting-specific shoes helps. TYR’s L-1 provides platform-grade stability by addressing things anatomically with a wider, foot-shaped toe box that lets your feet splay as you dig into dynamic movements.
The Best Gym Trainer
It might be obvious that for most gym-goers the best shoe is one that can handle a little bit of everything, but it’s definitely not obvious that an upstart brand founded by a former CrossFit competitor is the one making it. But with the ideal mix of support, stability, and comfort—and some good-looking colors—the R.A.D. ONE is that shoe. Wear it for lifting, for plyo, for CrossFit, wear it for whatever—including the three-mile jog to the gym.
The Best Training Shoes
Avancus did two key things to create the ideal shoe for going heavy: enlist pro athletes to provide feedback, and adopt features from Olympic designs for the first time in a flat gym shoe. Straightforward, but by no means easy to pull off…sort of like a maxed-out deadlift.
The Best Trail Running Shoes
Seven years after ultrarunner Karl Meltzer loaned his nickname to this high-cushioned dirt cruiser, the Speedgoat is still kicking—and, in fact, Hoka’s latest overhaul has made the best version of the shoe yet. It still has its trademark cushy feel no matter what debris is beneath your feet—this time with new foam—and it’s plenty stable with Vibram rubber biting into rocks and roots.
The Best Road Racing Shoes
Helen Obriri turned heads when she won the 2024 Boston Marathon in a pair of laceless On prototypes, and the engineering behind the shoe turned out to be almost as impressive. With a technology called Lightspray, On is able to make a one-piece upper in mere minutes by literally spraying it into its final form. It’s seamless, it’s breathable, it’s more eco-friendly, and it’s stacked atop layers of high-rebound foam with a carbon fiber plate between. Also, it’s already proven itself on marathon running’s most hallowed grounds.
The Best Faster Road Running Shoes
Like its namesake, the Pegasus is legendary, at least when it comes to dependable running shoes. For the Pegasus Plus, Nike decided mythological status wasn’t enough and swapped out the shoe’s midsole foam with ZoomX, the same stuff that propels its podium-class marathon shoes. It’s capped with an accommodating Flyknit upper that’s comfy and conforming, and the overall result is a running shoe made to take on higher-tempo miles with a boost of extra pep.
The Best Everyday Running Shoes
Hoka’s never been one not to experiment—hell, the first Hokas helped make high-cushion running shoes a norm across the sport—and the Skyward X is the latest success to emerge from the lab. The thick foam sole might not be novel anymore, but the convex carbon fiber plate inside is, and the effect is a noticeable pop that’ll have you flying through your miles.
The Best Skate Shoes
The Samba is as classic as a kickflip. Its roots aren’t in skating, but the Samba has always been about traction, and grip is what you’ll get from these rubber outsole skate shoes—not to mention French ripper Lucas Puig’s preferred stylings blended with some of the OG details that have made the Samba a classic.
The Best Golf Shoe
Neither old-school spikes nor street sneakers, these links-ready kicks from New Balance represent how the old-fashioned game is aligning with the times. The silhouette is inspired by NB’s classic 574 and the feature list is more than up to par—a grippy spike-free outsole, waterproofing with a warranty, and a Cush+ foam midsole are everything you need (besides a solid swing) to get you to the green.
Cycling Gear
The Best Gravel Racing Bike
Some bikes try to do everything well and wind up in the ditch. Not Cervélo’s newly retooled Áspero: With increased tire clearance for rubber that can handle rough roads and trails, the bike can go anywhere (as a gravel bike should). But more than anything, it’s built for speed. It skips features like rack mounts so riders can focus on one thing: hauling ass down dirt roads.
The Best Gravel Bike For Everyone Else
The Rambler, from a very cool new indie brand called Wilde, is as happy to rip off 100 mixed-surface miles as any carbon-fiber racing machine. But what sets it apart (besides the old-school steel good looks) is versatility. Kit it out with racks and fenders for commute duty? Throw some riser bars and turn it into a townie? Take it on a week-long bikepacking trip? This bike does it all.
The Best Road Bike
Road bikes can’t be sleek without some serious engineering, and the BMC Roadmachine 01 TWO is as streamlined as it gets. With clean carbon fiber lines and not a cable in sight, the bike just looks fast (because it is) and the Shimano spec is made to match appearances. But that doesn’t mean BMC went skimpy on features—the Roadmachine has integrated bottle cages, a downtube storage compartment, and even an integrated taillight.
The Best Bike Trainer
For anyone who won’t accept the idea of an offseason, the best way to spin inside is with a trainer. The KICKR has been at the front of the pack for a while and Wahoo is constantly updating it to make the indoors feel like the outdoors. With slight side-to-side movement and the ability to mimic a 20% grade incline, the KICKR can simulate whatever routes you typically ride while measuring speed, distance, power, and cadence data. With Wifi connectivity and Zwift integration, you can even keep the riding crew together till the roads are back in decent shape.
The Best Cycling Shoes
Whether or not your cycling aspirations aim for the peloton, your feet deserve pro treatment. These cycling shoes provide it with a tongueless, two-piece TPU upper that molds to and supports your tarsals atop a stable carbon fiber sole. Mesh paneling and perforations keep things cool in the warm seasons while made-to-match neoprene toe caps will keep you spinning through winter, and the versatility doesn’t end there—the M3 comes with insoles that offer varying amounts of arch support so you can fine-tune the fit as if they were made just for you.
The Best Cycling Apparel
Give cycling-obsessed Italian designers access to a state-of-the-art sensor array that can assess the thermal output of riders as the pedal and what do you get? A highly considered, high-tech jersey made specifically for riding in moderate fall temps. With body-mapped honeycomb mesh, the Gregarius is made for that extra warmth on brisk mornings and extra cool in the midday heat, making it one of the most versatile bike shirts we’ve ever seen.
Fitness Tech
The Best Workout Headphones
Jabra’s Elite 8 Active earbuds are waterproof, dustproof, drop-proof evidence that gone are the days when rugged has to mean overbuilt. They’re as small as any set of wireless earbuds and their fast-charging case is pocket-sized—but they pack a wallop in sound quality. (Whatever you’re listening to is all you’ll hear, thanks to active noise cancellation.) Most importantly? They’ll stay in your ears on a jog or during a burpee set.
By transferring vibrations through the skin and your noggin’s temporal bone to the cochlea, these headphones enable the marvel that is bone conduction audio—and the ability to listen to your workout playlist without sacrificing awareness of everything else happening around you. The newly updated OpenRun Pro 2 has Shokz’s latest unobtrusive audio tech—plus a 12-hour battery and sweat-proof silicone construction—giving you the best sound quality and allowing you to hear that cyclist whizzing by on the left.
The Best Running Watch
Thirty-eight hours is a lot of running, but that’s how long the Pace 3 can operate in its full dual-frequency GPS tracking mode. That’s good enough to cover the world’s most arduous ultrarunning events or solo adventures, which are aided by other features like breadcrumb nav, alerts when you’re off course, elevation profiles, and even sun movement info, all in an impossible 11.7mm thick case.
The Best Multisport Watch
Disconnecting might be a big part of the point of getting off-grid, but the extra sense of security in knowing you have access to Garmin’s complex satellite network isn’t the only reason to bring the Fenix along when you go. The bright, AMOLED-screened watch can do seemingly everything—from tracking far-flung jaunts on foot, bike, or skis, to monitoring your workouts and sleep at home and letting you know what you might want to focus on. Hell, it can even help you with hydration and conquering jet lag, acting as a coach no matter where you’re going or what you’re doing.
The Best Health Tracker
Since the Apple Watch launched 10 years ago, the technology has continually improved year after year: new features, better design, and health metrics that feel like they can sometimes rival those found in the doc’s office. A decade on, the latest announcement that the watch can now detect sleep apnea, a condition where breathing stops and starts intermittently throughout the night, proves that 10 years on, there’s still ground worth breaking in the health-tracking space.
Recovery
The Best Sleep Recovery System
The science is in: The secret to recovery is a good night’s sleep. To get one, there’s a better way than counting sheep (as if that ever worked)—a sleep system that works with the mattress you already have to keep you cool, detect snoring, wake you up with a gentle vibration and some heat, and provide insights into just how well last night went.
The Best Heated Massage Device
Add infrared light therapy to the ever-growing list of at-home recovery protocols to get in on. It’s believed that red light stimulates your body’s mitochondria, giving them the extra boost they need to repair cells. It’s used for reducing muscle and joint pain, reducing inflammation, and powering up recovery, and this FDA-approved sleeping bag-style setup has a total of 2,520 LEDs to help you make the most of it.
The Best Wearable Recovery Device
If you imagine your primary care doc’s blood pressure cuff turned into leg-length sleeves and made for massaging, then you’re getting close to the Normatec Elite. Each sleeve has five overlapping pressure zones that squeeze and release to pump up circulation and lymphatic drainage, boosting recovery and feeling pretty damn good to boot.
The Best Cold Therapy Device
The Freeze Sleeve is the modern-day ode to an ice pack wrapped in a dish towel. Pop the gel-packed sleeve in the freezer and it’s ready for wrap-around compression and cooling that stays in place so you can address those sore muscles while on the move.
The Best Sleep Tech
If you were told that wearing a specialized headband for 15 minutes before bed could make you get to sleep faster and for longer without as much tossing and turning, would you wear it? That’s the proposition behind Somnee, a device that uses EEG and algorithms to serve up a session of transcranial electrical stimulation at bedtime to (safely!) enhance the quality of your zzz’s.
Home Gym Equipment
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The Best Weights
Leave it to Thor himself to shrink a rack’s worth of weights down to a single set of dumbbells that can go from five pounds to 50 with the simple rotation of the handle. The magnetic base keeps the plates organized, and a steel pin locking system provides security through each workout—which you can source from Centr’s popular fitness app.
The Best Smart Treadmill
Treadmills live in basements because that’s where we store things we don’t want to look at, but Technogym has created a machine you’ll want to dedicate a room on the top floor to. Its surface is made of sound-dampening slats that have some shock-absorbing give, like a track, and it can simulate the steepest hills in your neighborhood and hit paces faster than Helen Obiri can handle. It’s built for hard HIIT workouts too—there’s a mode that simulates pushing a sled loaded with 55 kilos—and its 27-inch display provides running efficiency insights and beams in your favorite classes.
The Best Walking Treadmill
If you want to take your walking game up a notch—like, literally—the NordicTrack X24 is made for it. While the belt goes fast (up to 12 mph), the deck is cushioned and impact-absorbing, and the pivoting screen is a whopping 24 inches (and now comes loaded with streamers like Netflix), the real show stopper is the incline which toggles between -6 and 40%. Combined with the accompanying iFit technology that automatically adjusts speed and incline based on your fitness level, this tread lacks no bells and whistles to help you achieve whatever you’ve been training for.
The Best Pilates Reformer
Pilates dates back to the 1920s, but you wouldn’t know it by the looks of the sleek and streamlined reformer from Frame. The eight-foot machine brings the popular fitness class genre into the home gym with a 24-inch touchscreen that swivels and allows access to Frame’s 250-plus classes, which cover classical, contemporary, fusion, and power Pilates.
The Best All-in-One Gym
What looks like an OG Wii Balance board is actually one of the best do-it-all at-home pieces of gym gear around. The Trainer+ is essentially a compact cable machine, with varied weights up to 440 pounds that can be pushed, pulled, lifted and squatted through a use of varied (included) attachments. Follow along to the guided classes (available for a monthly membership) to take advantage of the over-200 full-body exercises you can perform with the Trainer+ so it doesn’t end up like your last piece of unused home gym equipment.d
The Best Ab Workout
Load all the iron you want onto a barbell. We’ll betcha that if you hop on any one of Sebastien Lagree’s three machines—the Megaformer, the Microformer, or the Miniformer—your muscles will ache and quake. The Pilates-inspired modality targets the core, placing it in the center of every movement and working slow-twitch muscle fiber through slow, intentional movements. Our pick this year is the Miniformer Pro, which strikes the perfect balance between being big enough for most dudes to get in a great workout and small enough to not overwhelm a room. The Pro model gets bonus points for having an angled platform that allows for a full range of motion into movements that will make your core—and legs, and arms, and, and, and…—quake.
The Best Cable Trainer
Gymgoers know that few pieces of equipment are as valuable as the cable station. Lugging all those weights into your home gym setup might seem like a Hulk-level task, but Beyond Power’s Voltra turns any power rack into a cable machine with ease. The battery-powered rechargeable Volta lets users select their weight and perform any cable exercise they’re used to, with the weight capping out at 200 pounds even though the device itself weighs just under 13 pounds.
The Best Kettlebell
No matter where you stand on kettlebell complexes (hey, they’re still a workout, man!), these highly functional weights are arguably just as great, if not better, than dumbbells. From goblet squats to clean and presses, these adjustable kettlebells will help you blast through your workout no matter your strength level or storage capacity.
The Best Rucking Gear
Rucking is perhaps the simplest strength workout there is: Carry around some heavy stuff. So why do you need a new carrier? This one, the latest model in a long cycle of refinement from market leader Goruck, positions a heavy plate in an ergonomically perfect spot on your back. It’s ideal for workouts that require some real movement like pull-ups and jogging—or just building strength while walking the dog.
Fitness Nutrition
The Best Protein Powder
The Nutter Butter was always among the OG cookie classics, the ones you traded your friends for at lunch. To punch up their protein mix—which includes whey along with digestive enzymes—Ghost didn’t just add PB cookie flavor, it added the real deal. You read that right: actual Nutter Butter cookies crumbled up inside the tub.
The Best Pre-Workout Supplement
There are a lot of reasons to work a pre-workout mix into your gym nutrition: increasing energy, cranking up performance, enhancing focus, and improving recovery. There are also a lot of reasons to be unsure about run-of-the-mill mixes, but that’s not an issue with the offerings from Transparent Labs. It doesn’t have artificial sweeteners or coloring, but it does have ergogenic aids, natural testosterone-boosting ingredients, and nootropics to help fuel you through your workout.
The Best Hydration Powder
Ask any avid runner or cyclist what’s in their water bottle and chances are they’ll say it’s Skratch. Founded by a sports scientist-slash-cycling coach, the company’s original electrolyte drink mix was made to fuel serious efforts. The company’s newest formula, however, is made for when you aren’t sweating; it’s electrolytes and real fruit juice without any added sugar to fuel your daily grind.
The Best High-Carb Energy Fuel Powder
When it comes to endurance sports, carbs are king. We’ve known this for a while. But more recently, pros have been turning the science on its end, doubling what was thought to be the appropriate carb-per-hour intake for long bouts. You need the right drink mix to pull off something like that without puking on the side of the road, and First Endurance’s high-carb EFS-Pro is the right drink mix, with 60-120 grams of carbs per bottle and flavors that are palatable when your stomach feels like a laundry machine.
The Best Glucose Monitor
Prescription continuous glucose monitors have been a game changer for people with diabetes: instead of needing to draw blood for a momentary snapshot of their glucose levels, they can tap their phone on an unobtrusive implant that instantly reveals the overall trend for the last few hours. Off label, and somewhat controversially, they’ve also become very popular with the biohacking crowd. Now, Dexcom’s Stelo is the first wearable glucose sensor available over the counter to anyone. It’s being marketed to people with Type 2 diabetes or prediabetes who are not taking insulin to help them manage their illness with lifestyle changes: Stelo helps to see how your body’s glucose levels change depending on what you eat, how well you sleep, and your level of daily activity. But given that metabolic health is a big new fitness buzzword, we predict Stelo will find a much larger audience than that. We’re not 100% sold on glucose monitoring for healthy people—we generally advocate eating intuitively rather than obsessing over numbers. But a month with a glucose sensor is, at a minimum, a fascinating snapshot of how your body functions.
The Best Nutrition Innovation
Chances are you have a powerful endurance performance enhancer in your pantry. Baking soda, aka sodium bicarbonate, has long been known to boost anaerobic capacity, but it does so with serious risk to the gut. Maurten figured out how to fix the problem using its hydrogel formula, cracking the code on a secret weapon that’s already being used by the world’s best endurance athletes.
The Best Creatine
Momentous holds every product it makes to the highest of standards, including its creatine. Single sourced in Germany and lacking anything extra, this is as pure as creatine gets; just amino acids without the additives to boost your next workout.
CONTRIBUTORS:
Tanner Bowden, Tyler Chin, Chris Cohen, Sam Schube, Avidan Grossman, Ian Burke, and Ali Finney
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