CrossFit Games: Dawn of a new sport

The 12th edition of the CrossFit Games is underway. Defending champion, American Mat Fraser leads the Men's section after the end of the first day of the mega event while Hungarian Laura Harvath tops the Women's leaderboard. The opening day saw a series of extremely intimidating events. The Cycle Crit, Time for 30 ring muscle-ups, CrossFit Total and 42KM marathon rowing tested the fitness levels of top athletes to a great extent. With four days to go, it is still a long way before we can identify who is the fittest on the planet.

Constantly varied functional movements performed at a high intensity aka CrossFit is the most popular fitness culture nowadays. Many gyms that specialize in CrossFit have opened in India over the past few years. It is its effectiveness in fat loss and muscle gain that has received so much support and interest from the people of all ages across the world. But the thing that is adding a huge number of followers to CrossFit is The CrossFit Games.

The CrossFit Games were started by Dave Castro (Director of CrossFit Games) in the year 2007. CrossFit Games consist of 20 CrossFit workout events held over a period of five days. 40 top athletes across the world participate in each category in this mega event with a global audience of more than 2 million.

The road to the Games

The Open - First round of CrossFit Games

CrossFit Games were open to all in its initial years. Two years later due to increased participation, regional qualifiers (called the Sectionals) were introduced. The first ever CrossFit Open, an online qualification round, was witnessed in the year 2011. Since then CrossFit Open has remained the first round of the CrossFit Games. On Thursday of every week, a CrossFit workout is posted online on the official channels of the CrossFit Games for five continuous weeks (in February-March of every year).

Every participating athlete has to submit a video of themselves attempting the workout before the next Monday. The videos are later scrutinized by analysts. Top athletes from each region (on the basis of their score in the Open Workouts) are then invited to the Regionals (called the Regional CrossFit Games). The Regionals take place in the month of May. Top 5 athletes in the Regionals are invited to participate in the CrossFit Games taking place in the month of August.

The Steep Rise

The CrossFit Games received a handful of participants in the year 2007 in two categories (Men and Women). It was open to every individual traveling to Aroma, California in the first two years. The first edition was held at a small ranch owned by the family of director of the games, Dave Castro in California.

Since then its popularity has rocketed. From 70 participants in 2007, the participation in CrossFit Games has now reached 415,000 in 2018. It had only two categories (Men and Women) in the 2007 but now there are 8 categories each for Men and Women on the basis of age. 2 Teenage groups (4-15 years and 16-17 years), Open, Masters (35-39 years, 40-44 years, 45–49 years, 50–54 years, 55–59 years, and 60+ years) are the age group categories in the Men and Women's sections.

Apart from the individual events, there is a Team Event which is contested by top teams among CrossFit Affiliates across the globe. The first CrossFit Affiliate Gym was opened in 2013 and according to CNBC, there are more than 13,000 Gyms across 120 countries today. The exponentially growing numbers indicate the burgeoning strength of the CrossFit community on the map of the world.

Athletes to look out for

Mat Fraser, Defending Champion of CrossFit Games 2018

Mat Fraser is by far the favorite male athlete to win the CrossFit Games this year. He also won it in 2016 and 2017. The dominance of Fraser can be seen from the fact that he won the title in 2017 with one event left to play. The other athletes who can push Fraser are Patrick Vellner, Brent Fikowski, Lucas Hogberg, Cole Sager and Lucas Esslinger.

Tia-Clair Toomey won the CrossFit Games 2017

The Women's category looks far more open as compared to the Men. Last year, Australian Tia-Clair Toomey narrowly snatched victory from Australian compatriot, Kara Saunders. Apart from Kara, who will be determined to go one better this year, there are several other strong women competitors.

The Icelandic trio of Annie Thorisdottir, Sara Sigmundsdottir, and Katrin Davidsdottir finished the 2017 CrossFit Games at 3rd, 4th and 5th places respectively and are still going strong this year. Hungarian Laura Harvath shocked the world with her first-place finish on the first day of the 2018 CrossFit Games. It will be interesting to see who finishes at the top of the podium after the end of the final day of the CrossFit Games 2018 on 5 August. You can witness the CrossFit Games Live on Facebook on its Official Page.