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Arielle Loewen and James Sprague Snag Top Prizes at Reps Ahead Pro 5

November 26th, 2024

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Good morning and welcome to the Morning Chalk Up.

In today’s edition:

  • Reps Ahead Pro 5 featured great match-ups in a head-to-head, tournament-style competition over the weekend. Games podium veterans took home the top prizes, and you can get all the details below.

  • John Wooley, the Wooley Memeth and host of Constantly Varied Conversations breaks down some of CrossFit’s recently announced season structure details from a business perspective.

  • How would the new 2025 CrossFit Games qualification rules have affected recent seasons? Find out who would’ve missed the cut today.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“My legs were fricked.” - James Sprague, 2024 Games champ and men’s winner of Reps Ahead Pro 5, on the effects of the “Lindsey” and “Candice,” the workout sequences the athletes faced over the weekend.

COMPETITIONS

Credit: Chad Mueller

Reps Ahead Pro 5 Recap: James Sprague and Arielle Loewen Take Home the Top Prize

Reps Ahead Pro 5 provided blood, sweat, and possibly some tears. 

The setup at the Stockyards Event Center in Denver, CO, was ideal for the head-to-head fitness fights — and the athletes put on a show.

The Results

The Semifinals (Saturday, November 23)

  • Cole Greashaber (2) defeated Tudor Magda (3) at 2:00 in Round 4.

  • James Sprague (1) defeated Malachi Bennett (4) at 1:35 in Round 3.

  • Trista Smith (2) defeated Zoe Warren (3) by nine reps after the full four rounds.

  • Arielle Loewen (1) defeated Rachel Noel (4) at 1:13 in Round 3.

The Finals (Sunday, November 24)

  • Rachel Noel (4) defeated Kelly Stone (3) at 55 seconds in Round 2. (Stone filled in for Zoe Warren due to illness)

  • Tudor Magda (3) defeated Malachi Bennett (4) at 2:29 in Round 1.

  • James Sprague (1) defeated Cole Greashaber (2) at 1:47 in Round 2.

  • Arielle Loewen defeated 2) Trista Smith at 2:17 in Round 2.

Here’s how it all went down.

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SPEED READS

💰 💴 Black Friday is still a few days away, but the sales have already begun! Check out BarBend’s rundown of the best early Black Friday deals on everything from workout equipment to supplements.

🏋️🐐 Rich Froning’s Basement Gym: Check out the first part of this video series touring Rich Froning’s Cookeville, TN, fitness compound from our friends over at Garage Gym Reviews.

📺👂Hear Their Stories: CrossFit’s new video series, Hear Their Stories, brings viewers into the heart of the CrossFit community. The newest episode, “Taking the Capitol By Storm,” features Games athlete Rebecca Fusilier and one of the most iconic moments in CrossFit Games history, “The Capitol.” Watch now.

😎🌴 2024 TYR WZA Miami Beach Roster Updates: In case you’ve missed it, TYR WZA Miami Beach has begun to announce the athletes “confirmed to celebrate!” So far, the roster includes “the Broadway Girls” (Haley Adams, Brooke Wells, and Sydney Wells), Ricky Garard, Pat Vellner, Dani Speegle, James Sprague, and Arielle Loewen. Many more to come.

ICYMI: Yesterday, we dropped the final part in our series highlighting longtime CrossFit affiliate owners and the advice they wish they had at the outset. The topic is “the more things change, the more they stay the same.”

MEMBER EXCLUSIVE

Credit: @wooleymemeth / Instagram

Why the New Community Cup Matters – A Look Into Crossfit’s Masterplan

CrossFit HQ announced some huge CrossFit Games changes last week, which, in my opinion, were a public relations effort designed to redirect the community away from the third-party investigation news that they released a few days prior. I talked about it in a series of videos I recorded on “Constantly Varied Conversations” over the previous week. 

  • Not only did CrossFit “bury the lede” in its announcements, but I believe HQ tipped its hand toward what it really wants to do next as a company strategy. 

Back in February, CrossFit CEO Don Faul was a guest on  my show, Kettlebells and Cocktails with John & Niki. During our discussion, he talked about taking a significant amount of money out of the sport side of the business. 

At the time, I think many thought Faul was referring to an immediate takeback or an immediate reduction in funding. However, based on the changes they released last week, you can see a season-over-season initiative that paints a long-term picture of what they’ve announced they are doing in 2025. 

On the surface, the changes  that they're making are significant both structurally and financially. 

  • At its core, CrossFit is seeking to streamline the season, taking a significant portion of it online and, in some areas, even outsourcing it.  

This is an effort to cut costs and liabilities while reducing workload on the organization. While that's likely a smart financial decision, it will create a lot of discussion in the sport community and probably help them distract a lot of people from the other issues going on within the business. 

In reality, it's a total win for them in that perspective.  

CROSSFIT GAMES

Credit: Sebastian Vallejo

By the Numbers: What If the 2025 CrossFit Games Qualification Rules Were Applied in 2023 and 2024?

The 2025 CrossFit Games season has been announced — and among the many changes next year, the individual field size has been reduced from the traditional 40 athletes to 30. 

  • While the details on qualification remain thin, there is also no mention of region-specific qualifiers.

With the new rules in place, how would the past two Crossfit Games qualification seasons have played out? Let’s take a look.

The 2024 CrossFit Games Season

To see who the top 30 Semifinal athletes were from this past year, we created a combined leaderboard and ranked the scores in each event from all 277 men and 279 women. 

  • However, because the running course in Event 1 this year was so different across the seven Semifinals, we only took the scores from Events 2-6 to make a global rank for this analysis.

Under the recent CrossFit Games qualification system, tickets were allocated to specific regions. If the 2025 rules were applied to the 2024 season, the CrossFit Games roster would have looked different in a few minor ways and one major way. 

  • On the men’s side, the combined Semifinals leaderboard places Tudor Magda (14th) and Seth Stovall (23rd) in the top 30 athletes, but they did not earn a Games ticket in 2024. 

  • On the women’s side, two women would have qualified who did not make the trip to Fort Worth, TX, in 2024: Anikha Greer (18th) and Ashleigh Wosny (28th).

And if the 2024 CrossFit Games operated under the new qualification rules, the third Fittest Women on Earth, Emily Rolfe, would’ve been watching from home. 

HIGHLIGHTS

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