Brooke Wells’ Last Dance at the CrossFit Games: A Review
After a 10-year career, competing at the highest level in CrossFit, a journey that began at age 19, Brooke Wells’ run came to a close in 2025.
- Over the course of a decade, Wells inspired countless athletes, from her fellow competitors to those who watched and cheered her on from afar.
She grew from a Games rookie as a teenager, was one of 10 athletes to compete at The Ranch at the 2020 CrossFit Games, served as a mentor to her sister, Sydney, and became an entrepreneur, co-founding While on Earth.
For Wells’ last trip to the Games, filmmaker Carlos Bown followed along, capturing moments and memories of those days in Albany, as well as interviewing those closest to her throughout her career.
The new documentary, available on YouTube, lets us peek in on it all.
Brooke Wells’ Last Dance at the CrossFit Games opens with Wells reminiscing about her career, looking back at the journey of the last 10 years.
Wells reflects on her first Games, when she was the youngest competing in her division. The year was 2015, and she remembers “taking a beating.” This was the first year the Games tested “Murph” (unpartitioned, in the heat), and at the time, she said she hated it.
- It wasn’t at all what she expected. “If this is what the Games is,” she told herself then, “I don’t ever want to come back.”
But she did, and 2016 was her favorite year of competition. After those Games, she knew it was a sport and a career she wanted to stick with indefinitely.
Fast forward to 2023, and Wells realized she was almost done and approaching retirement.
That year would have been her ninth Games, and she wanted to make it to ten. At Semifinals that year, she tore her plantar fascia and didn’t qualify.
Ready to give it another go the following season, she found herself falling out of love with the daily training lifestyle, which validated her desire to hang it up.
- “I’ve never had a summer. I’ve had to sacrifice so much. I have to say no a lot. I feel like it’s affecting a lot of my relationships with my family and friends. They all support it and get it, but I feel selfish… and I feel like I miss out a lot on life. I’m very thankful to be where I’m at and do what I do, but trying to be the best in the world…something has to give,” she said.
“I’m excited to pour more into my friendships and relationships with my family, she continued, “and be there more for people like they’ve been there for me in the past ten years, so it’s exciting.”
In addition to highlighting the 2025 Games, the film also takes us back to the traumatic moment in 2021 when Wells dislocated her elbow during the max snatch event.
- “It was the scariest thing I’ve ever been through. My elbow was in my armpit, and it was so painful. They couldn’t get it back in for 20 minutes,” she revealed.
Wells now understands that it was a defining moment for her, and one she’s ultimately grateful to have experienced. It allowed her to grow, learn more about herself, share her vulnerable journey to full recovery, and finish fifth at the Games the following year.
Heading into the final workouts in Albany, Jake Marconi coached Wells for the last time.
- “Make your last day your best day. Not performance-wise. But go out there and give everything you have as if you’re never going to do this again. Go out, work hard, put on a show for everyone, and for yourself. When you finish, look around. Find your parents, wave to everybody, do your thing so that when you finish today, you’re crying tears of joy and you’re stoked,” Marconi told her.
Reflecting on the past decade, Wells acknowledges there were years when she wished she had placed higher, but so few people even remember those early finishes. “They remember the moments,” said Wells, “And they remember how you made them feel.”
Brooke Wells’ Last Dance at the CrossFit Games, is out now on the HWPO Training YouTube Channel.
