Moneyball for CrossFit: Predicting Event Winners

July 25, 2022 by
Photo Credit: CrossFit LLC

There are only eight days until the 2022 NOBULL CrossFit Games begin. Now that the athlete field has been selected, there is a buzz amongst Games fans surrounding a few questions:

  • What will the events be?
  • What will the events test?
  • And, of course, who will win?

For the last few years, I've been thinking about these questions. I wanted to develop a set of criteria to break down events, and use those criteria to help predict athlete placement at the CrossFit Games. With the help of Brian Friend, James Hobart, J.R. Howell, and Taylor Self, we finally have a system to accomplish this task.

Follow along as we determine predictive factors in CrossFit tests, identify these factors in previous tests, and compare athlete performance in similar tests in order to predict which athletes will perform the best in certain tests at the 2022 CrossFit Games.

What Predicts How an Athlete Will Perform?

If we are building a model to predict athlete performance, we need to clarify the attributes of a workout that create separation. In CrossFit specifically, that differentiation comes down to two things:

  1. Time
  2. Modalities

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