Heatonminded

Strength Sports and Strength Supplements

The Stats Behind 1st and 2nd Place in A Crossfit Competition

On December 15th Crossfit Games champion Mat Fraser won the first ever Crossfit sanctioned event (The Dubai Crossfit Championship), earning himself a spot at the 2019 Crossfit Games. This also does not bode well for other competitors as Fraser will now have 8 months to prepare solely for the Games while other competitors will still have to find a way to qualify.

For anyone familiar with Crossfit this probably came as no surprise as Fraser has not lost a competition since 2015.

Related: How Many Crossfit Athletes Were Actually “Competitive”?

Fraser is dominant and everyone is aware of it, but actually just how dominant is he?

He always ends a competition in first and has a pretty comfortable point lead over other competitors, but he doesn’t often blow them out of the water in individual events. The overall point lead is dominant but the workout’s margin of victory is not.

rogue rubber dumbbells
Rogue Dumbbells – Only $60 for a 35lb Pair

In order to see what the true difference is between 1st and 2nd place in a Crossfit competition we’re going to compare Mat Fraser (1st) and Bjorgvin Karl Gudmundsson (2nd) by looking at their performances at the Dubai Crossfit Championship.

The Difference Between 1st and 2nd

Recorded by Heatonminded.com

Simply by looking at the chart above we can see that Fraser can never really shake Gudmundsson, especially not at first. Up until about event 7 it truly is a battle for Fraser to pull away.

In timed events Fraser did not ever beat Gudmundsson by over a minute and Gudmundsson actually beat Fraser in two events, although the 2nd was by only a single second.

Up until event 7 Fraser’s margin of victory was not ever over 5% including a 1% victory in event 6. He was only beating Gudmundsson by mere seconds.

By looking at events 1-6 you could not consider Fraser to be dominating. Out of those first 6 events he did have 4 first place finishes and a 2nd place finish, but he also had an 8th and 9th.

rogue echo bike

Where Fraser excels however, and truly did begin dominating was in the final events. In the last 4 events Fraser took 1st place in all of them and did so with his largest margins of victory against Gudmundsson.

Gudmundsson tried to stay close and finished with 4th, 5th, 6th, and 3rd place finishes but since Fraser consistently took 1st the point gap became too substantial.

Related: How Strong Are The Crossfit Games Champions Compared To Pro Olympic Weightlifters?

Ultimately this is in fact a dominant performance by Fraser, taking the title with a total of 7/10 first place wins and a lead of 112 points over 2nd place Gudmundsson.

In Crossfit dominance is not displayed in a single event, but instead the champion is often who is the most consistent.

For updates about more content like this follow Heatonminded on Facebook

3,877 responses to “The Stats Behind 1st and 2nd Place in A Crossfit Competition”