Who's on Top of the 2025 CrossFit Open Leaderboard?

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Good morning and welcome to the Morning Chalk Up.

In today’s edition:

• Colten Mertens and Mirjam von Rohr are in a position to take the overall 2025 CrossFit Open wins (unofficially) despite Dallin Pepper and Fee Saghafi putting pressure on them to the end.

• Anthropologist Katie Rose Hejtmanek, who just published a multi-year study of CrossFit, offers her take on how loyalty to the group, not to an individual, is the defining feature of its “beloved community.”

• In case you missed last weekend's announcement, the World Fitness Project revealed its plans for the Fitness Project Initiative. We talked with its leadership for more details.

QUOTE OF THE DAY

“The most organic way to get members to the gym is through word of mouth. We want to create an experience where your members feel they are part of a Fitness Project.” - Saxon Panchik, Head of Community Initiatives for WFP

CROSSFIT GAMES

2025 CrossFit Open Results — Mirjam von Rohr and Colten Mertens on Top of the Leaderboard From Start to Finish

The battle for the top spot in the 2025 CrossFit Open has been a close one on the women’s side, with only one point separating first and second place. 

The men saw one of the most dominant performances in history, with second place still only 11 points behind. 

2025 CrossFit Open Overall Results
(Note: The leaderboard remains unofficial as of 5 a.m. ET, March 20.)

Mirjam von Rohr will (likely) take the overall win on the women’s side with 13 points, currently one point ahead of two-time Games athlete Fee Saghafi. 

Von Rohr netted back-to-back first-place finishes in 25.1 and 25.2 and an 11th in 25.3. Once finalized, she will join Sam Briggs, Sara Sigmundsdottir, and Mal O’Brien on the short list of women who have won the Open in back-to-back years.

Top five women: 

1. Mirjam von Rohr – 13 points

2. Fee Saghafi – 14 points

3. Lucy Campbell – 30 points

4. Andrea Solberg – 34 points

5. Carolyne Prevost – 42 points

For the men, Colten Mertens has been a man on a mission. 

In the end, he was just 16 seconds shy of being the first athlete in history to win all the workouts in a given year.

Last year marked the first time in history that both the male and female winners of the Open did not qualify for the CrossFit Games. 

Mertens (as well as von Rohr) are on a path to make sure that is not repeated this year. 

Top five men: 

1. Colten Mertens – 4 points

2. Dallin Pepper – 15 points

3. Jeff Adler – 16 points

4. Austin Hatfield – 21 points

5. Cale Layman – 30 points

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SPEED READS

🎟️ 💪 2025 CrossFit Games Tickets: Presale for 2025 CrossFit Games tickets starts today, March 20, for Reliant Club members. Affiliates with 12 or more members signed up for the Open can purchase tickets starting March 25. All affiliate presales start on March 27, and the sale will open to the public on April 1.

🌎🏆 World Fitness Project, On the Pulse: Last night, the workouts for the World Fitness Project Challenger Qualifier I were released. On the WFP update show, On the Pulse, co-founder Will Moorad and host Derrick Forrest discussed the workout details, programming overview, and judging. 

💻 🏋️ PushPress Spotted: PushPress, the industry-leading gym management platform, is sponsoring the IBJFF Pan Ams, the largest Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu tournament in the Americas. The tournament will be held at the Silver Spurs Arena in Kissimmee, FL, from March 19 to 23.

🏃 📋 Red Bull HYROX Coaches Camp: Sign up now to be on the mailing list for the Red Bull HYROX Coaches Camp, a three-day coaching summit that will elevate your knowledge and skills in data analysis, planning and periodization of training, HYROX coaching methodology, and building your coaching brand.

• The details: The camp will take place from August 4 to 7 at the renowned Silverstone Race Circuit and Red Bull Racing in Milton Keynes, UK.

ICYMI: The Open Report is back for week eight! Check out Known and Knowable’s analysis of the 2025 CrossFit Games prize purse and the potential funds available to operate the Games in Albany, NY.

MEMBER EXCLUSIVE

On CrossFit’s Beloved Community

“One. Of. Us! One. Of. Us!” the CrossFit coach chants. 

It was the summer of 2016, and I was new to the gym and my anthropological study of CrossFit. I stopped lacing up my new Reebok CrossFit lifting shoes to see who he was chanting at. 

It was me. 

I look down at my new pink and white lifters, which say “CrossFit” on the side. I’d been sprinting in a track and field club before I started researching CrossFit, and after a few weeks of lifting in my running shoes, I realized I needed lifters. 

You can’t lift as heavy in cushiony running shoes. 

We make eye contact, and the coach smiles and laughs. He calls this out in front of everyone. “Soon, you’ll be drinking the Kool-Aid,” he tells me as I stand up, ready for squats. 

“Drinking the Kool-Aid”

“Drinking the Kool-Aid” is a common refrain in the United States and CrossFit. 

It refers to Jim Jones and Jonestown. In 1978, Jonestown members drank something like “Kool-Aid” in a mass suicide event. 

“Drinking the Kool-Aid” explicitly implies dangerous devotion and groupthink. The phrase is often derided as implying that people are blindly following a leader or beliefs. 

However, as with many CrossFitters, it was used with approval and admiration, a reclamation of the term “cult.” 

• In 2014, Greg Glassman, in an interview on ReasonTV, responded to this “cult” label. “We get asked all the time: Is this a cult? And we just get pissed off and say, ‘No, it’s not a cult!’ … No, this is an active, loving, sweating, breeding community. … ‘Cult of the Caveman.’”

INDUSTRY

World Fitness Project Introduces the Fitness Project Initiative

The creation of the World Fitness Project has been driven by a passion to give athletes, everyday gym-goers, and fans a new way to come together as a community, support one another, compete in, and enjoy fitness. 

• Twenty men and 20 women on the elite level have signed with the WFP, and the first tour event will kick off in May in Indianapolis.

Now, to add its competitive sports events, the World Fitness Project is also launching the Fitness Project Initiative, the initial phase of its gym outreach program.

This initiative is aimed at enhancing the gym and community experience for every member in the gym. 

The World Fitness Project will work closely with the “Founding Fifty,” an initial group of 50 gyms that affiliate with the WFP, to help them enhance member retention, engagement, community, and additional revenue streams.

• It’s important to note at the outset that the Fitness Project Initiative is non-exclusive (meaning gyms are welcomed and encouraged to affiliate with multiple brands and training modalities or methodologies).

HIGHLIGHTS

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

• 🎂Happy belated birthday (3/18) to Jake Marconi.

• Congratulations to Marie Rognstad, who PRed her split jerk at 115 kilos/253 pounds.

• Check out Gui Malheiros on these rope muscle-ups.

• Congratulations to Claudia Gluck on this 150-kilo/330-pound back squat PR.

• 🔥Well done to Gabi of CrossFit East Tamaki in New Zealand on this 117-kilo/258-pound clean double.

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