6 Burning Questions from 2024, Answered

January 6th, 2025

POWERED BY:

Good morning and welcome to the Morning Chalk Up.

In today’s edition:

  • Answering our six burning questions from the 2024 CrossFit Games season.

  • The 2024 CrossFit Games season saw several triumphant returns to competition from athletes we missed in 2023. Check out our “Comeback Chronicle” from last year.

  • TJ Vaught, a coach and community pillar at CrossFit Lynchburg, is recovering from two strokes in December. Learn how you can help with his mounting medical expenses below.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“He doesn’t even need physical therapy. I feel like he could go work out and be OK, but because he did have surgery, it’s more about making sure all the incision points are healed enough. He wouldn’t be where he is without being so fit beforehand.” - Anna Gray on her husband, TJ Vaught’s physical status as he recovers.

INDUSTRY

Credit: Carlos Fleury

Answering Our 6 Burning Questions About the 2024 CrossFit Games Season and Affiliate Community

Each season, we start with some key questions that we hope to answer in the coming year. Then, once the dust has settled and the calendar has turned over, we look back and take stock of how things turned out (and sometimes chuckle at our naïveté).

  • Our original thoughts and caveats on each question from last January are below in italics, followed by our answer with the benefit of hindsight.

Now that the 2024 season is officially over, let’s review.

  1. What happens in the women’s division with Toomey-Orr (and others) returning in 2024?

The 2023 CrossFit Games were missing many top athletes from the previous season, including five of the top ten on the leaderboard: 

  • Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr: First in 2022.

  • Mal O'Brien: Second in 2022.

  • Brooke Wells: Fifth in 2022.

  • Kara Saunders: Seventh in 2022.

  • Haley Adams: Ninth in 2022.

While we don’t know that all of them will return to competition in 2024, we can count on some of them for sure, including Toomey-Orr. What will the return of these women mean for the top of the leaderboard?

In 2023, we wanted to know who would fill the Toomey-Orr vacuum, this year it feels like there are even more questions as the G.O.A.T returns.

ANSWER

At this point, we can unequivocally say that Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr is the G.O.A.T., and the year that she took off to expand her family did not change that. 

Now, we can’t know what would have happened if the 2024 Games had been held without tragedy and a full roster of the top 40 athletes. 

  • We saw at the Rogue Invitational in November that the 2023 Games and Rogue champ Laura Horvath can push the seven-time Fittest Woman to her limits, but it’s hard to imagine another outcome other than Tia on top of the podium. 

A MESSAGE FROM WODIFY

Save time and grow your gym faster. Get $1,200 off your first year of Wodify, the #1 gym management software.

Your gym deserves the best tools to simplify operations and boost growth. Join the thousands of owners already using Wodify, rated the #1 gym management software. Wodify helps gym owners:

  • Automate member engagement to save hours every week.

  • Capture leads and convert them into loyal members.

  • Save money by consolidating multiple tools into one platform.

And that's just the start. Book a demo now and get $1,200 off your first year.

Offer ends March 31, 2025.

SPEED READS

🇰🇷🥇 The Far East Throwdown 2025: Over the holidays, events hosting In-Person Qualifying Events (formerly “Semifinals”) began releasing information about their qualifying processes and events. Check out that schedule here.

  • Weon-Woo Lee, the Far East Throwdown General Director, announced details about the only in-person Asia qualifier via YouTube video. Among other details, he announced that there would be no regional restrictions on those wishing to attempt to qualify for the event.

🤝👑 Syndicate Crown and The Fittest Experience: Two of the three in-person qualifying events in North America announced that they would follow the North America West (The Fittest Experience) and North America East (Syndicate Crown) competitive regions from last season. Learn more about that here.

  • Learn how athletes can qualify for The Fittest Experience (May 16-18, 2025) here and Syndicate Crown (May 30-June 1) here.

🌎🏆 World Fitness Tour: Over the holidays, the team behind the World Fitness Project began announcing the inaugural class of “signed” athletes for the 2025 season. Get caught up here.

🏴󠁧󠁢󠁳󠁣󠁴󠁿🏋️ The 2025 Rogue Invitational Dates Announced: Get ready, the Rogue Invitational returns to Aberdeen, Scotland, October 31-November 2, 2025. Check out the IG post here and sign up for email updates here.

🎟️💪 Velites Sports x TYR WZA Ticket Giveaway: The official jump rope brand of TYR WZA Miami Beach is giving away five pairs of festival tickets and two pairs of VIP tickets for the celebration of fitness later this month. Winners will be announced on January 10; sign up now!

ICYMI: TYR WZA Miami Beach — the premier fitness festival — is kicking off at a new location and venue in a few weeks. In this opinion piece, Nicky Freymond talks about why she looks forward to it all year.

MEMBER EXCLUSIVE

Credit: Carlos Fleury

8 Comeback Athletes Who Shaped the 2024 CrossFit Season

Earlier this year, we wrote about some athletes who were set to return to the CrossFit Games after missing the 2023 season. 

  • There were also a handful of athletes we thought could return to the competition floor after an extended absence. 

Now that we’ve turned the calendar page on 2024, it’s a good time to revisit how these comeback seasons finished up.

Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr 

Toomey-Orr missed the 2023 season as she welcomed her daughter Willow into the world. 

The G.O.A.T. didn’t stay on the sidelines for long, though, as she returned six months post-partum to compete at the 2023 Rogue Invitational where she finished second, just behind Laura Horvath. 

  • A wrist injury led Toomey-Orr to take the final event of the Open cautiously, but from that point on it was full speed ahead. 

COMMUNITY

Credit: CrossFit Lynchburg

29-Year-Old CrossFit Coach Who Suffered Two Strokes Is Recovering — But His Medical Bills Are Growing

On December 9, 2024, Anna Gray came home after doing a class at CrossFit Lynchburg in Lynchburg, VA, to find her 29-year-old husband with a facial droop, unable to use the right side of his body.

  • “Thankfully, he was alive when I found him, and I was able to get him in the car and to the ER,” Gray said.

Her husband, TJ Vaught, a CrossFit coach at CrossFit Lynchburg, had suffered two strokes and underwent emergency surgery on his brain to remove three blood clots.

The surgery went well, and doctors are hopeful Vaught will make a full recovery; however, Gray said he will need some “pretty intense speech therapy,” and the recovery timeline is unknown.

Gray credits CrossFit with how quickly Vaught has been able to recover physically. 

  • “He doesn’t even need physical therapy. I feel like he could go workout and be OK, but because he did have surgery, it’s more about making sure all the incision points are healed enough [before he goes back to the gym],” she said. “He wouldn’t be where he is without being so fit beforehand.”

The most challenging part right now is his communication abilities.

  • “He knows what he’s trying to say, but words aren’t coming out correctly. He can read, but not out loud, so communication is difficult,” Gray said. 

One Big Thing

Gray works for a small nonprofit organization, and Vaught is a student who was about to graduate and become a teacher, so the couple doesn’t have adequate medical insurance to cover the rising costs.

  • The 5 a.m. class, one of the early-morning classes that Vaught coaches at CrossFit Lynchburg, quickly stepped up and set up a GoFundMe page, which had raised a little more than $21,000 at the time of publishing.

HIGHLIGHTS

Celebrating a PR, hosting a fundraiser, this, that, or otherwise? Send us a tip.

  • 🎂Happy birthday to Carolyne Prevost.

  • Check out this snatch progression from Gabi of CrossFit Norseman in Australia, ending at 92.5 kilos/204 pounds.

  • Amazing teamwork from Daunte and Aron from CrossFit Boynton Beach in Boynton Beach, FL.

  • Congratulations to Joshua and Amber Al-chamaa, who are going to be welcoming their second baby soon.

  • 🔥Take a look at these impressive triple touches from Loredana of CrossFit Alioth in UAE.