A Sunday to Remember for Hungary’s Laura Horvath, Crowned Fittest Woman on Earth
“I love Sunday. That’s my favorite day of the week,” said Laura Horvath on Sunday morning at the 2023 NOBULL CrossFit Games in Madison, WI.
After today, there’s no chance of that changing any time soon.
Horvath is the Fittest Woman on Earth.
The details: 26-year-old Horvath, widely considered the favorite to take the title, came into the day 48 points behind 18-year-old Emma Lawson, so she needed a big Sunday to reach her ultimate goal to finally stand on top of the podium. And the most straightforward way to do that would be to beat Lawson on all three tests.
- Test 10: Muscle-Up Logs – Check. Horvath made a statement first thing on Sunday morning on the test featuring muscle-ups and sandbags over logs. She cruised to a test win, while Lawson finished sixth, meaning Horvath cut Lawson’s lead to just 23 points.
- Test 11: Parallel-Bar Pull – Check. Once again, the test belonged to Horvath, who attacked the heavy rope double-unders, P-bar traverse and hand-over-hand sled pulls with calm confidence, resulting in a second straight test win for Horvath, giving her a 22-point lead heading over Lawson into the final test of the day.
Test 12: Echo Thruster Final – It was pretty much a “how much pain do you want to put yourself in” style test with thrusters, Echo bike calories and a walking lunge to finish, where Horvath needed to be fifth or better to guarantee the title, and there was just no way that wasn’t going to happen.
- Horvath led much of the test, staying well ahead of Lawson, and did enough for a third place finish in the heat (fourth overall), giving the three-time podium finisher the title for the first time in her career.
Lawson finished second, 47 points behind Horvath, becoming the youngest teenager to ever podium, and although she led much of the competition, Lawson said she is thrilled with the result.
- “If you could have told me last week that I would be in this position, I wouldn’t have believed you,” Lawson said after the competition.
Rounding out the top three, and becoming the world’s fittest mother, was three-time Games competitor Arielle Loewen, the picture of consistency all weekend, while Gabriela Migala and Alex Gazan were fourth and fifth respectively.
What Horvath is saying: After her win, Horvath was asked about what it means to be a role model for young girls in the sport.
- “It’s a lot of pressure, but I am just very happy that me and my body can do this. I’m not looking at the new Barbie movie (thinking) ‘Oh, I want to look like that.’ I want to look like I want to look like, and I just want to prove that my body, whatever it looks like, can do these amazing things,” Horvath said. “It’s amazing what our bodies can do when you put the work in.”
In Horvath’s case, it means her body is the fittest one in the world.
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