Sanctionals Qualification, We Need a Better Process

Good morning and welcome to the weekend edition of the Morning Chalk Up. This is Justin LoFranco, your Editor-in-Chief, to bring you a quick wrap-up of the major news items throughout the week. Today’s edition is brought to you by Competition Corner.

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“Don’t wish it were easier, wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems, wish for more skills.” — Jim Rohn

By Justin LoFranco, Editor-in-Chief

The 2019 CrossFit Open is all but wrapped up, but we still have two-and-a-half months and 10 Sanctionals remaining in this new expanded season and one of the clearest lessons we’ve learned over the course of this year is that the Sanctionals qualification process needs to be streamlined and simplified.

All but one of the 15 Sanctionals have held a qualifier and nearly all have offered some kind of wildcard invite or qualifier exemption. In some instances, this has led to a process that could be described as less than transparent, and in some instances not entirely fair.

Take Fittest in Cape Town for example.

According to their rules, all athletes were required to do the online qualifier. Athletes competed, qualified, accepted and committed to a fairly large price tag to travel and compete in Cape Town, South Africa.

It was only after those athletes accepted and began purchasing flights and accommodations that they found out two powerhouse athletes, Cole Sager and Katrin Davidsdottir, were going to be there. That realization is probably why a few big name athletes decided they’d sit that one out.

Fittest in Cape Town isn’t alone either. You can see this same process unfolding at Asia CrossFit Championship, Reykjavik CrossFit Championship and Brazil CrossFit Championship where unexpected invited athletes are being announced weekly.

Athletes deserve a system where the rules are clear and the process is transparent, and I think it’s clear that the athletes who accepted their invite didn’t have a complete picture.

To be fair, this is a new season and Sanctionals are doing their best to put on events in tight timeframes and limited budgets. Having a ‘Dottir’ compete at your event brings eyeballs, fills seats and makes money.

But why are some athletes doing qualifiers others don’t have to? What criteria determine an exemption and who decides to apply it?

Continue reading…

Anytime a sport changes the rules, there are going to be unintended consequences. With the recent changes CrossFit has made, one of these unintended consequences has to do with team rosters. Here is the team roster loophole that athletes and teams are taking advantage of.

While we wait for final score verification to wrap up, we spent some time looking at the relationship between Open performance and past Games winners. Does winning the Open mean you’re going to win the CrossFit Games?

Right now in Washington, D.C. 20 men, 20 women and 38 teams are squaring off in the first Sanctional since the conclusion of the 2019 CrossFit Open and one of only 10 opportunities remaining to grab a spot at the CrossFit Games. But the pathway to qualify from the Mid-Atlantic CrossFit Challenge is not exactly straightforward.

When Bronson Lovell converted an abandoned church into CrossFit Anahola, he couldn’t have known it would be closed down just a few weeks later. But that didn’t stop him from moving forward and with the help of Keala Foundation and the #GiveAloha campaign, CrossFit Anahola can hopefully continue to change lives in their community.

Feeling recharged and “more than ready to start Games training,” Dani Speegle is intent on making the most of the next four months in preparation for her highly anticipated rookie debut in Madison. “I’m going to do everything in my power to make a statement at the Games. I’m going there to compete, not just show up,” she tells us.

Don’t forget that this weekend is the Mid-Atlantic CrossFit Challenge. You’ve also got your work cut out for you if you’re registered for the 2019 Granite Games or the CrossFit Lowlands Throwdown online qualifiers. Get those WODs done and scores in by Monday.

Once you’ve wrapped those up, go ahead and settle into the weekend with these five things.

1. The 2019 CrossFit Games will be here sooner than you think. Get pumped. 
2. Hunter McIntyre is hoping to lock in a wildcard for Madison this summer.
3. You guys gobbled up this chopped salad. 
4. Sam Briggs did some spring cleaning and a whole lot of training with Sara Sigmundsdottir.
5. Lauren Fisher got some cleaning in and so did Regan Huckabee.