One of the many changes to the 2019 CrossFit Games Season was the advent of four individual “at-large bid” invites to compete at the Games.
The 2020 CrossFit Games are over, and Mat Fraser and Tia-Clair Toomey have once again emerged as the Fittest on Earth. With nine championships between them — five for Fraser, four for Toomey — they are undoubtedly the Fittest in History. See coverage here. Ben Smith was the men's winner, and Katrin Davidsdottir was the women's winner. The Affiliate Cup was won by CrossFit Mayhem Freedom from Cookeville, Tennessee, captained by four-time individual men's champion Rich Froning Jr. Who moved to team competition this year.
- Per Section 4.06 in the 2019 Rulebook: “CrossFit Inc. reserves the right to invite four individual athletes to compete at the Games. The means by which an athlete can earn one of the four at-large bids is solely up to CrossFit Inc.’s discretion.”
The first of these bids was offered to professional obstacle course racer Hunter McIntyre. This has brought a robust debate in the CrossFit Games community on how these at-large bids should be handed out.
- 2010: CrossFit Games – Los Angeles, California; 2011: Reebok CrossFit Games – Carson, California; 2012: Reebok CrossFit Games – Carson, California; 2013: Reebok CrossFit Games – Carson, California; 2014: Reebok CrossFit Games – Carson, California; 2015: Reebok CrossFit Games – Carson, California; 2016: Reebok CrossFit Games – Carson, California.
- With 27 Sanctionals, a complicated backfill process rounding out the top 20 in the CrossFit Open, and 239 national champions plus the team division, it can be difficult to get a full and up-to-date picture of who has qualified for the CrossFit Games. We have the definitive list to help keep you informed. Today: 2020 CrossFit Games qualifiers so.
- 2012 CrossFit Games Open: Regional Winners Photo, Images and Wallpaper By cdn3.therxreview.com Resolution: 1601 x 536 389 kB jpeg Incoming search terms: List of CrossFit Games Winners.
The history: Special invites and “wildcard” spots to compete at the CrossFit Games are not a new phenomenon. Here is a look back at how they have been allocated in the past.
- 2007 and 2008 Games: There was not a qualification process for the first two CrossFit Games. Athletes just had to show up and compete.
- 2009 Games: Regionals were instituted after the large number of competitors in 2008 (119 men and 36 women competing Rx). The 18 Regionals allocated a differing number of Games spots per Regional. A “last chance online qualifier” for those who did not qualify at Regionals offered additional spots. Also, 2009 saw the first “special games invites” (bypass Regionals) given to the top 5 men and women from the 2008 Games along with special invites for the 2007 Games men’s and women’s Champions.
- 2010 Games: The top 5 men and women from the 2009 Games were offered special invites as well as the 2007 and 2008 Games Champions. Additionally, the 2009 Affiliate Cup Champions, Northwest CrossFit, were given a special invite.
- 2011 Games: The top 5 men and women from the 2010 Games were offered special invites along with the past Games Individual Champions. The 2010 Affiliate Cup Champions, CrossFit Fort Vancouver, were given a special invite. If one of the special invited athletes competed at Regionals and earned a qualifying spot, then an additional qualifying spot would be available in that Regional. This happened with Jason Khalipa and Annie Thorisdottir competing and winning their Regionals, thus opening up spots for Neal Maddox and Helga Torfadottir respectively.
- 2012 Games: The special invites were removed for the previous year’s Games Top 5 individuals and any past Games Champions or previous year Affiliate Cup Champion. Everyone had to compete at Regionals to qualify for the Games. However, CrossFit did provide for additional qualifying spots at Regionals where a past Games Champion earned one of the qualifying spots. Thus, with Rich Froning, Graham Holmberg, and Jason Khalipa all qualifying, additional Games spots were offered to Marcus Hendren, Scott Panchik, and Joey Warren respectively. For the Women with Annie Thorisdottir and Kristan Clever qualifying, Caroline Fryklund and Lindsey Valenzuela were respectively offered Games spots.
- 2013 Games: The same rules were in play as in 2012. Jason Khalipa, Mikko Salo, and Rich Froning earned qualifying spots in their Regionals, thereby extending Games spots to Marcus Filly, Mikko Aronpää, and Graham Holmberg respectively. Interestingly, this brought up a debate if then 5th Place Marcus Hendren in the Central East Regional (where Froning and Holmberg competed) should be offered a Games spot given that Homberg in 4th Place was a past Games Champion. Ultimately a Games invite was offered to Hendren. Per the rulebook at the time – “CrossFit Inc. reserves the right, in its sole and absolute discretion, to invite past winners, guest athletes, Teams or others, to participate in any stage of competition.” It also helped that Hendren set the Regionals’ world record in the final event. Also this year, Kristan Clever took 4th Place in the Southern California Regional. However, none of the three qualifying women at the Regional were past Games Champions. Clever competed in the Regional with a shoulder injury which visibly hindered her performance. CrossFit exercised its right to also offer Clever a Games invite similar to Hendren.
- 2014 – 2018 Games: The rule to provide additional Games spots at a Regional if a past Games Champion earned a qualifying spot was removed. CrossFit still reserved the right to offer special invites to any stage of the Games season, however, no special invite spots were given out during these years.
- 2019 Games: As outlined earlier, four “at-large bids” can be offered at CrossFit’s sole discretion. When Greg Glassman discussed these at-large bids at the beginning of the 2019 Games Season, he suggested that they could go to “blowhard” athletes in other athletic fields.
The “blowhard” invite: Although some in the community are not fans of this, it is not a new idea. Back at the 2009 CrossFit Games, Glassman made this statement about athletes from other training programs claiming to be fitter than CrossFit Games athletes –
- Flashback to 2019: Greg Glassman talking about athletes from other training programs claiming to be fitter than CrossFit Games athletes, “There are people that say this isn’t a test, that there are people out there fitter than people competing here today. Great. Prove it. I’ll give you the opportunity, the forum to make that point perfectly clear. Bring your athletes down, let’s see what they can do.”
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The CrossFit Games is the final of three events in the CrossFit Games season, and the most elite competition in the sport of CrossFit. This year was meant to be the first year of the new CrossFit Games season structure. With the season starting off with the Open in October, followed by 28 sanctional events throughout the year, and the games as the final event in August of 2021. However, the season took a swift turn due to a number of reasons, mainly due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Below you’ll find out about how the 2020 CrossFit Games season panned out, and a list of all of the 2020 CrossFit Games winners.
CrossFit Open
The season starts out with the CrossFit Open as the first competition. The Open is an event which anyone over 14 years old in the world can participate in. The registration and cost is $20 per participant. Each participant makes a video recording of them completing each workout and submits their scores for five workouts over five weeks. There is a single workout each week (20.1, 20.2, 20.3, 20.4, 20.5) and participants get to try the workout as many times as they want in the week long period to submit the best score possible.
It’s a cool event because of its democracy. Each participant enters their results into a public database on the CrossFit website. Therefore each participant can see how they stack up against all other participants in the world. By the end of the event, the top man and woman from the CrossFit Open will earn a spot to the CrossFit Games. Also, the top 20 men and women worldwide will rise to the top of the leaderboard and automatically qualify to participate at the CrossFit Games.
Congratulations to the National champions and winners of the 2020 CrossFit Open, Patrick Vellner who won the men’s individual competition and Ragnheiður Sara Sigmundsdottir who won the woman’s individual.
CrossFit Sanctionals
The CrossFit Sanctioned events are now the second pathway for top men, women and team athletes to receive invitations to the Games. This year was meant to be the second year to see CrossFit Sanctional events in the CrossFit Games season. The season would span the globe with 28 events in 21 different countries on six continents. Each Sanctional event is a separate event, and are now the only direct pathway for teams to compete at the CrossFit Games. The goal of the Sanctionals is for male and female individual athletes and teams to take first place and earn an invitation to compete at the CrossFit Games. Winners of the Sanctional events do not have to compete in The Open, but are incentivized to participate for improving their ranking at the CrossFit Games. In 2020 these sanctioned events were meant to occur from November 2019 to October 2020.
Unfortunately due to the COVID-19 pandemic things took a turn for the worst, and all but 10 Sanctionals were able to go ahead. These are the sanctioned events that took place for the 2020 CrossFit Games season:
- CrossFit Filthy 150: Dublin, Ireland – Nov 22 – 24, 2019
- Pandaland CrossFit Challenge: Chengdu, China – Dec 7 – 8, 2019
- Dubai CrossFit Championship: Dubai, UAE – Dec 11 – 14, 2019
- CrossFit Mayhem Classic: Tennessee, USA – Jan 10 – 14, 2020
- CrossFit Strength in Depth: London, UK – Jan 24 -26, 2020
- Norwegian CrossFit Championship: Col, Norway – Feb 14 – 16, 2020
- Wodapalooza CrossFit Festival: Florida, USA – Feb 20 – 23, 2020
- Australia CrossFit Championship: QLD, Australia – Mar 5 – 8, 2020
- Brazil CrossFit Championship: Sao Paulo, Brazil – Mar 6 – 8, 2020
Congratulations to all of the winners from each of these Sanctioned events. Unfortunately due to the COVID-19 pandemic all of the winners of these events were not invited to participate in the 2020 CrossFit Games this year.
CrossFit Games
The CrossFit Games is to the sport of CrossFit what the Superbowl is to the sport of football. This is the final event in the CrossFit Games series and in the past, after 3 days of grueling competition, one individual man, woman, and team are crowned the 2020 Fittest on Earth. This year we were meant to see hundreds of CrossFit Games athletes compete from more than 100 different countries.
However, this year was an unprecedented year for CrossFit.Inc, when CEO Greg Glassman made a very controversial statement, which highlighted many underlying issues within CrossFit, Inc that came to head and needed to be accounted for. Shortly after many HQ staff quit, affiliates de-affiliated and athletes withdrew from the 2020 CrossFit Games. Because of this Greg Glassman stepped down and retired as CEO, and shortly after the 100% purchase of CrossFit, Inc was made by Eric Roza. Eric became the official new owner and CEO of CrossFit, Inc in July, 2020. Due to this new sale, we saw many changes and HQ staff, affiliates and athletes re-affiliated with CrossFit, Inc. The Games would also go on, but they would now only showcase the individual athletes, seeing teams, masters and teen competitions all cancelled. Plus, there would be a new format for the final stage of the 2020 CrossFit Games.
The 2020 CrossFit Games – Stage 1
Stage 1 of the 2020 CrossFit Games became an online event which included the top 30 men and 30 women who were invited to compete in their homes or local gyms in one of 16 different countries. The top 5 men and women from Stage 1 would earn a spot in the final five of Stage 2, and the final in-person event at The Ranch in Aromas, Northern California. This innovative new format was to help protect the safety of athletes, while delivering a world-class Games experience to identify the world’s fittest individuals.
“The world is dealing with an unprecedented crisis. After extensive discussions with athletes and public health officials, we decided that this format was the best way to preserve the spirit and substance of the Games and ensure athletes can compete for the title of Fittest on Earth in a safe and fair manner.” – Dave Castro, CrossFit Director of Sport.
Due to travel restrictions and circumstances beyond control, the dates for the 2020 Reebok CrossFit Games were adjusted, and Stage 1 was 2 days of competition and took place September 18 – 19th, 2020. Athletes faced seven events over a two-day period. Here are the results of the winners from each of the 7 events:
Event 1 – Friendly Fran
3 rounds:
21 thrusters
21 chest-to-bar pull-ups
W 85 lb. M 115 lb.
Time cap: None
Winners:
Mat Fraser 3:08
Tia-Clair Toomey 3:40
Event 2 – 1RM Front Squat
Establish a 1-rep-max front squat
Time cap: 20 minutes
Winners:
Griffin Roelle 490 lbs
Tia-Clair Toomey 313 lbs
Event 3 – Damn Diane
3 rounds:
15 deadlifts
15 strict deficit handstand push-ups
W 205 lb., 2-in. deficit
M 315 lb., 3.5-in. deficit
Time cap: None
Winners:
Mat Fraser 2:44
Tia-Clair Toomey 2:28
Event 4 – 1,000-M Row
Row 1,000 meters
Time cap: None
Winners:
Roman Khrennikov 2:48.9
Karin Freyová 3:15.8
Event 5 – Nasty Nancy
5 rounds:
500-m run
15 overhead squats
15 bar-facing burpees
W 125 lb. M 185 lb.
Time cap: None
Winners:
Mat Fraser 17:50
Katrin Tanja Davidsdottir 18:16
Event 6 – Handstand Hold
Max freestanding handstand hold
Time cap: 20 minutes
Winners:
Noah Ohlsen 1:37
Katrin Tanja Davidsdottir 2:54
Event 7 – Awful Annie
For time:
50-40-30-20-10
Double-under
GHD sit-up
5-4-3-2-1
Clean
W 185 lb. M 275 lb.
Time cap: None
Winners:
Mat Fraser 8:46
Tia-Clair Toomey 8:01
Congratulations to the one and only reigning Fittest on Earth champs, Mat Fraser and Tia-Clair Toomey for winning first place of Stage 1 of the 2020 CrossFit Games. Here are your top final five male and female individual athletes headed to Aromas:
Top 5 Male Qualifiers for Stage 2 of the 2020 CrossFit Games:
- Mat Fraser 🇺🇸 656 pts
- Noah Ohlsen 🇺🇸 488 pts
- Justin Medeiros 🇺🇸 480 pts
- Samuel Kwant 🇺🇸 449 pts
- Jeff Adler 🇨🇦 420 pts
Top 5 Female Qualifiers for Stage 2 of the 2020 CrossFit Games:
- Tia-Clair Toomey 🇦🇺 615 pts
- Brooke Wells 🇺🇸 580 pts
- Haley Adams 🇺🇸 497 pts
- Katrin Davidsdottir 🇮🇸 490 pts
- Kari Pearce 🇺🇸 451 pts
Road to the Ranch Recap
The 2020 CrossFit Games – Stage 2
The final five men and women from Stage 1 got to battle if out in Stage 2 in an in-person competition for 3 days on October 23rd – 25th, 2020 for the title of 2020 Fittest Man and Woman on Earth. Athletes faced twelve events over a three-day period. Here are the results and the winners from each of the 12 CrossFit Games events:
Event 1 – 2007 Reload
For time:
1,500-meter row
Then, 5 rounds of:
10 bar muscle-ups
7 shoulder-to-overheads
W 145 lb. M 235 lb.
Winners:
Mat Fraser 13:07.02
Tia-Clair Toomey 12:47.98
Event 2 – Corn Sack Sprint
For time:
320-meter hill sprint with a corn sack
W 30 lb. M 50 lb.
Winners:
Mat Fraser 2:51.54
Tia-Clair Toomey 3:05.55
Event 3 – CrossFit Total
For total load:
1-rep-max back squat
1-rep-max shoulder press
1-rep-max deadlift
Winners:
Jeffrey Adler 1244 lbs
Tia-Clair Toomey 890 lbs
Event 4 – Handstand Sprint
For time:
100-yard handstand walk
Winners:
Mat Fraser 1:20.85
Brooke Wells 1:21.22
Event 5 – Ranch Loop
Run along 3-mile course through varying terrain
Winners:
Mat Fraser 57:47.45
Katrin Davidsdottir 1:00:53
Event 6 – Toes-To-Bar/Lunge
30-20-10 reps for time:
Toes-to-bar
Kettlebell lunge (yards)
W 24-kg kettlebells
M 32-kg kettlebells
Winners:
Mat Fraser 3:04.77
Tia-Clair Toomey 3:33.63
Event 7 – Snatch Speed Triple
For time:
1 snatch at each bar
Quarterfinal:
W 145-150-155 lb.
M 225-235-245 lb.
Semifinal:
W 160-165-170 lb.
M 245-255-265 lb.
Final:
W 175-180-185 lb.
M 265-275-285 lb.
Time caps: 1 – 2 – 3 minutes
Winners:
Mat Fraser 100pt
Tia-Clair Toomey 100pt
Event 8 – Bike Repeater
10 rounds:
440-meter bike sprint
1 legless rope climb (15 ft.)
Winners:
Mat Fraser 12:54.76
Tia-Clair Toomey 14:37.51
Event 9 – Happy Star
4 rounds:
200- to 300-meter hill run
5-7-9-11 reps of:
Burpee
Thruster
W 95-105-110-115-lb. thrusters
M 135-145-155-165-lb. thrusters
Winners:
Mat Fraser 8:18.21
Tia-Clair Toomey 8:42.59
Event 10 – Swim ‘n Stuff
4 rounds, each for time:
Air bike calories (10 15)
50-meter swim
10 GHD sit-ups
10 ball slams (40 60 lb.)
Rest
Begin a new round every 4 minutes
*Rounds 2 and 4 performed in reverse
Winners:
Samuel Kwant 8:29.66
Tia-Clair Toomey 8:26.48
Event 11 – Sprint Seld Sprint
100-yard sprint
100-yard sled push
100-yard sprint
W 80-lb. sled
M 105-lb. sled
Winners:
Mat Fraser 56.08
Tia-Clair Toomey 1:05.23
Event 12 – Atlanta
1-mile run
100 handstand push-ups
200 single-leg squats
300 pull-ups
1-mile run
W 14-lb. vest
M 20-lb. vest
Winners:
Mat Fraser 51:46.66
Kari Pearce 47:56.68
Fittest on Earth Individual Women Winners:
Tia-Clair Toomey produced the most dominant Women’s CrossFit Games performance by winning 9 out of 12 events, and her fourth consecutive CrossFit Games title, becoming the first ever four-time women’s champion, and Fittest Woman on Earth.
- Tia-Clair Toomey – 1025 points
- Katrin Davidsdottir – 665 points
- Kari Pearce – 585 points
Fittest on Earth Individual Men Winners:
Mathew Fraser produced the most dominant Men’s CrossFit Games performance by winning 10 out of 12 events, and his fifth consecutive CrossFit Games title, beating out 4 x Fittest Man on Earth Rich Froning, and becoming the first ever five-time men’s champion, and Fittest Man on Earth.
- – 1150 points
- Samuel Kwant – 605 points
- Justin Medeiros – 560 points
Rookie of the Year:
Spirit of the Games:
Unfortunately due to the pandemic, the CrossFit season was ruined for all involved with CrossFit, especially athletes trying to transition full-time to the sport. And CrossFit athletes worldwide were unable to fully benefit what would have been a very lucrative year.
Crossfit Games Results By Year
Here are your 2019-2020 CrossFit Games Top 10 Individual athlete payouts:
Women
- Tia-Clair Toomey – $415,080
- Katrin Davidsdottir – $136,020
- Sara Sigmundsdottir – $119,020
- Kari Pearce – $110,020
- Haley Adams – $71,962
- Karin Freyova – $55,500
- Brooke Wells – $52,000
- Amanda Barnhart – $46,020
- Sam Briggs – $44,520
- Kristin Holte – $40,020
Men
- Mathew Fraser – $354,542
- Patrick Vellner – $128,060
- Samuel Kwant – $128,000
- Justin Medeiros – $101,000
- Noah Ohlsen – $87,020
- Brent Fikowski – $79,500
- Jeffrey Adler – $63,020
- Roman Khrennikov – $55,500
- Chandler Smith – $46,500
- Björgvin Karl Guðmundsson – $39,520
Congratulations to all athletes who participated in the 2020 CrossFit Games season. It was an unbelievably unprecedented, interesting and of course exciting year, with an amazing performance by all athletes. And thank you to all the judges, volunteers, Rogue Fitness, Reebok, the Buttery Bros, and CrossFit Inc. for all of your hard work and dedication to ensure that the 2020 CrossFit Games season and show would still go on!
Crossfit Games Winners List 2020
And of course a huge congratulations again to five time Fittest Man on Earth Mat Fraser, and four time Fittest Woman on Earth Tia-Clair Toomey who decimated the field over the entire 2020 CrossFit Games competition. These two are your Fittest Man and Woman on Earth….. EVER!
Now bring on the 2021 CrossFit Games season!!!