CrossFit Games

Devin Ford Declines His Games Invite

April 25, 2019 by
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Devin Ford took to YouTube in this 23:37 minute video to share his side of the story.

In the video, Ford goes through a long-winded explanation of the situation, detailing the back-and-forth emails between Ford and CrossFit HQ which led up to the 1:10 penalty assessed to his 19.3 score. 

Some key quotes: “I’ve already decided in my head I know what I’m going to do if I get that invite…I will decline the invitation,” Ford said.

  • “Needless to say, I didn’t even look at my first and third workouts, I was so focused on the one workout I didn’t even have a video for.” 
  • “Ironically…handstand pushups, in particular, is actually one of my best movements.” 
  • “I got an email a little later that they reviewed the third workout and I missed ten reps — I only did 40 of the 50 handstand push-ups…I was like ‘there is no way I made that dumb of a mistake.’” 
  • “People saying the quality of my reps sucked, which could be a valid argument, or that I purposefully cheated by reducing 10 of the reps of the handstand push-ups, I’m not really sure how that makes any sense. If I was going to cheat, I wouldn’t just not do reps and hope they don’t look at it. And also, if I was going to skip reps it would be the damn box step ups.” 
  • “It was a dumb mistake but in no way was I trying to cheat.” 
  • “…saying my box step-ups didn’t count, which I don’t know may be valid. I’m not arguing one way or the other. I just sent all my videos in for review. The Games hit me with a major penalty. I don’t know what to say about any of that. It’s not even in my hands. It’s not like I can give myself a penalty.” 

The direct implication of Ford declining his invite:

  • Assuming Rich Froning (10th) declines his invite to compete on a team, then both Bartek Lipka and Patrick Vellner would receive invites.
  • With Vellner receiving a top 20 invite, the Wodapalooza Sanctional invite would pass onto Noah Ohlsen, who’s currently doing damage control at the CrossFit Italian Showdown this weekend in Milan.
  • Bartek Lipka and Milosz Staworzynski are tied for Fittest in Poland and their videos are still under review. If Lipka ends up national champion, then the invite passes down to Tim Paulson.

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