Every week more and more Crossfit sanctioned events are being released, letting competitors know just which competitions to take part of in order to secure a spot at the Crossfit Games under the new rules.
These are important to competitors as this is now one of only two ways to the Crossfit Games, the other requiring you to be the #1 fittest in your country during the Open.
Many Open and Regional bubble athletes are still very angry at these changes as they practically have taken away their chance to go to the Crossfit Games. Up until now if you made Regionals you had a chance to go to the Games by finishing in the top 5, which is no easy feat by any means but at least there was a chance. Now that Regionals are gone and only the #1 fittest in country as well as the #1 finisher in each sanctioned event will go to the Games a lot of potential competitors have lost hope.
Related: Which Sports Would Produce The Best Crossfit Athletes?
In order to see how many athletes were actually affected by these changes lets look at how many athletes could actually be considered competitive in 2018.
How many Crossfit athletes were truly competitive before 2018 changes?
The 2018 Crossfit Open had 429,157 total participants. Individuals participation (Ages 18-34) totaled 409,123.
Out of that 409,123 only 360 men, 360 women (40 in each regional x 9 regionals) and 1,036 team athletes (259 teams x 4 members each) competed in the 2018 Regionals.
That means only a total of 1,756 / 409,123 or 0.4% of individual athletes were truly competitive.
Last year only these 1,756 athletes had a chance to earn their way to the Crossfit Games, but what about bubble Open athletes that didn’t quite make Regionals but had the goal of making the Games in a year or two?
In order to determine how many Open participants were competitive we’re going to look at the top 100 participants in each Open region. Participants in the top 100 are all fairly close in total scores where a year of progress or different programming could yield different results.
Top 100 athletes + top 100 teams x 18 regions = 3,600 prospective Games athletes
3,600 prospective Games athletes – 1,756 that made Regionals = 1,844 bubble Open athletes.
Athletes that didn’t participate in Regionals or finish in the top 100 in the 2018 Open could not yet be considered competitive.
Only these small numbers of athletes were seriously affected by the 2019 changes. These athletes have likely been training for multiple years to even get to Regionals and eventually the Games, now their only hope is to place first in their entire country or place first in a sanctioned event.
The 2019 Crossfit Games will invite 1 male, 1 female, and 1 team from each of the 144 countries with a Crossfit affiliate during the Open (864 total athletes) along with 1 male, 1 female, and 1 team from 16 sanctioned events (96 total athletes).
That means 960 total athletes will be invited to the 2019 Crossfit Games, however how many of them will actually be competitive?
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