Last week, the top athletes in the sport of CrossFit competed at their home-base gyms in Stage One of the CrossFit Games.
Why weren’t they in Madison, Wisconsin like usual?
Due to the Pandemic, the CrossFit competition season was thrown a loop this year. Like last year, the goal was to gather top athletes from over 20 Sanctional events (like Wodapalooza, Granite Games and the Rogue Invitational), however starting in March the day before the Atlas Games in Montreal, Canada was about to begin, all events from that point forward were slowly cancelled.
That left the Games roster with 30 men and 30 women who had qualified through the Open (the top 20 worldwide) and the few Sanctionals that did happen so far that season. So, CrossFIt HQ (likely many thanks to new CEO Eric Roza) sent out equipment, gear and judges to every athlete location and the Games were on.
Stage Two will begin in mid October (19-25th) at the original CrossFit Ranch (Dave Castro’s family land) in Aromas California where the Top 5 men and 5 women will compete for the title of Fittest On Earth. This event will be live-streamed on CrossFit’s Facebook and YouTube and on CBS networks!
The Morning Chalk Up presented some shocking statistics about this year’s Stage One events and standings. Check them out below;
- Mathew Fraser is now the winningest male or female individual CrossFit athlete of all time.
With last weekend’s win, that brings his total to 17 official CrossFit competition wins. If you don’t include the CrossFit Open, he’s won 10 straight events. The last time he lost an in-person competition was the 2015 CrossFit Games. - Both Tia-Clair Toomey and Mathew Fraser set new records for most CrossFit Games event wins:
Toomey surpassed Annie Thorisdottir with 15 career event wins and Fraser passed Rich Froning with 19. Fraser has the most career event wins of any athlete in history, male or female.
- 🤯🤯🤯 Mathew Fraser would have finished 235 points ahead of second-place when competing only against the top 5 athletes.
Using the new five-athlete scoring table and measuring Fraser’s performance against the other four, the outlook doesn’t look good. Fraser would win four of the seven contests and take second in the other three. His margin of victory would be a whopping 275 points. - The United States females will get their first podium since 2014.
An American woman hasn’t stood on the podium since Julie Foucher took third at the 2014 CrossFit Games. With three of five athletes qualifying for stage 2 being American, the streak is guaranteed to end as at least one athlete will take home some hardware.
- Katrin Davidsdottir is the comeback queen of stage 1.
After an ok 12th place finish in event 1 Friendly Fran and then bombing the 1 rep max front squat with a 27th place finish, she sat in 22nd place after the first two events. The sled dog went on to average a 4.8th place finish over the next five events, including two event wins to take the fourth qualifying spot. Oh, and by the way, this is her sixth straight CrossFit Games where she’s placed in the top 5 which is the same as Tia-Clair Toomey. - Had Chandler Smith rowed 0.1 seconds faster or held his handstand for just one more second, he would have qualified for the finals in Aromas.
For sixth place finisher Kristin Holte, the situation is similar; she needed a 0.5 seconds faster row to take the fifth qualifying spot.
- Nine of the ten athletes heading to California to compete next month live in the United States;
only three are foreigners (Katrin Davidsdottir, Tia-Clair Toomey and Jeffrey Adler), making this the most North American top 5 field since 2013. - With an average age of just 22-years-old, four of the top 10 athletes represent one of the youngest fields ever at the Games:
Brooke Wells (25), Haley Adams (19), Samuel Kwant (24) and Justin Medeiros (21). Even more mind-blowing is that only one of those athletes is a Games rookie: Justin Medeiros, and the other three already combine for a total of 12 individual Games appearances; 15 if you include Adams’ teenage divisions. - 🤯🤯🤯 Tia-Clair Toomey would likely have beat 28 male 2012 Games athletes in regular Diane.
The comparisons are not exactly apples to apples but they’re close: both have the same amount of total reps (90), however the women’s barbell is 20 pounds lighter BUT there are strict deficit handstand push-ups, which kinda evens it out. When Diane was programmed at the 2012 Regionals, Toomey’s 2:28 Damn Diane would have been faster than 28 athletes who qualified for the Games including Scott Panchik, Rob Forte, Lucas Parker, Frederik Aegidius, Austin Malleolo and Matt Chan.
- Mat Fraser’s 3:08 Friendly Fran time would have been 7th overall at the 2012 CrossFit Games,
except that Fraser’s version was 20 pounds heavier, had chest-to-bar pull-ups and there were an additional 36 reps, which is a whopping 40% more reps than regular Fran.
If you haven’t had the chance to watch some of these amazing athletes compete, grind into the depths of the “dark place”, celebrate wins and grow from adversity, go to CrossFit Games YouTube to click through some footage!
Source: https://morningchalkup.com/2020/09/24/the-ten-most-startling-facts-from-the-2020-crossfit-games-stage-one/?utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=9252020%20Morning%20Chalk%20Up&utm_content=9252020%20Morning%20Chalk%20Up+Version+A+CID_34d4ea64a348d973591ff47cef8916d1&utm_source=subscriber&utm_term=Continue%20Reading