Emma Lawson Extends Lead, Gabriela Migala Vaults from 13th to Fifth in Race to be the Fittest on Earth
When it comes to the top of the women’s leaderboard, Moving Day didn’t exactly live up to its name at the 2023 NOBULL CrossFit Games, as four of the top five athletes from yesterday are still in the top five.
Teenager Emma Lawson continues to show she has no weaknesses—three more top 10 performances, including a test win on Saturday for Lawson—and has lengthened her lead on second place from 19 points to 48.
Not to be outdone, however, Hungary’s Laura Horvath continued to chip away and get one step closer to her goal of winning it all tomorrow. She moved from third yesterday into second heading into the final day of competition. Further, she finished her day with a test win on the Olympic Total—205-pound snatch and 265-pound clean and jerk—a workout she said she “executed perfectly.”
Meanwhile, Arielle Loewen and Alexis Raptis also did enough to stay in top five: Raptis entered the day in second and left the day in fourth, while Loewen jumped from fifth to third overall.
The movers: Despite the top athletes refusing to relinquish their spots in the top five, there were two notable big movers on Saturday: Gabriela Migala and Emma Cary, both of whom were expected to contend for the podium at the outset of the week.
- After a somewhat slow start to the week, Migala started the day in 13th, but really came to life on Saturday with back-to-back-to-back top five finishes on the Cross-Country 5K test, the Intervals and the Olympic Total, helping her vault herself into fifth, and well within podium contention (75 points away from third).
- Similarly, Cary had up-and-down performances on Thursday and Friday, and entered the day in 16th overall, but put forth three top-12 performances on Saturday—including placing second in Test 8: Intervals—and heads into Sunday in eighth overall.
Worth noting: Veteran Annie Thorisdottir, competing in her 12th Games as an individual, is another athlete we cannot forget about. She has been steady, but not stellar, all weekend. If history has anything to say, it’s that Thorisdottir knows how to attack Sunday at the CrossFit Games. She sits in seventh overall, but if she does what she always does (and if she gets a little help from other athletes) you never know how high the Queen of Iceland can still climb.
The big picture: Sunday may very well come down to Horvath and Lawson, two athletes who have taken a different public approach to their goal for the weekend.
- Horvath reiterated in a post-test interview yesterday that her goal was to win it all this year, while Lawson has been more cautious, saying “I’m just trying to do what I can, and whatever happens happens,” she said after winning Test 8.
Sunday might just determine whose approach is best.
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