This weekend athletes will descend on Zoetermeer in the Netherlands for The Nationals.
The Nationals will host 28 divisions including 12 (m/f) adaptive divisions using WheelWOD’s classification system:
- Upper Extremity 1 point of contact
- Upper Extremity 2 point of contact
- Lower Extremity 1 point of contact
- Lower Extremity 2 point of contact
- Seated without ab function
- Seated with ab function
- Seated Tetraplegic
- Neuromuscular minor
- Neuromuscular major
- Sensory Hearing and Vision
- Short Stature
- Intellectual
The other divisions will be made up of some age groups (teens and youngsters) and open divisions ranging from iron up to Platinum – the more expensive the mineral, the more difficult the workouts, with the Diamond division being RX+.
From November of last year to February, athletes competed in a series of online tests with a view to making it to The Netherlands for the final event and taking on a further five workouts.
The Nationals has been a mainstay of the European calendar since its inception in 2017. Last year, founder Peter Kramer made the move to include the adaptive community in its competitive landscape. Enter Sybille Blitgen and Mandy Loes, founders of CrossFit Iron Sparks, an affiliate running inside a high school in neighboring Luxembourg. Sybille and Mandy had the understanding and ambition to effectively involve the adaptive community in events and The Nationals Adaptive Edition was born, a fair competition at your own level.
“My brother has Down Syndrome, I always wanted to do something in sports for people with disabilities because I want to give everyone a platform,” Sybille explained. “The biggest challenge was funding. Luxembourg’s government refused to give funding or help because it isn’t a federation sport, so, we got back to Peter and asked that created this event in The Netherlands.”
Once the event was initiated, the next hurdle was deciding on the divisions. “When we saw how many divisions there were we decided to have them all, not like CrossFit who don’t care about above knee or below knee. We called in a specialist and he came to us and taught us everything on impairments to understand and know how to adapt adequately, that was by far our biggest challenge,” Sybille said.
The event comes less than two days after CrossFit HQ released a statement on the changes in the adaptive field and complaints it had received about classification to date. Sybille isn’t taking the statement lightly or accepting it as a valid explanation. “I can use those words and make it sound eloquent, but, I’m not saying anything. When I heard Paralympic committee’s standards – that is already a problem, every Paralympic sport has its own classification and standards. Changing of the Neurodivision into multiextremity and athletes being ineligible, one athlete being told she was too fit to be eligible. It is easy – WheelWOD do it, we’ve been here 18 months and we’ve done it, just put in the work and listen to the athletes. When they said ‘we’ve decided to hold an in person event for the most populous divisions – what an ableistic thing to say. I’m worried they’re becoming more exclusive rather than inclusive and they’ll lose the athletes if they don’t listen. Implementing an equitable and fair competition is feasible, yes, you will make mistakes but you grow,” she said.
The event will run Saturday and Sunday from 10am-6pm Central European Time. Saturday will see adaptive athletes; teens; youngsters; Iron; Gold; Platinum and divisions take part. On Sunday adaptive, Diamond, Bronze and Silver divisions will take to the floor with Diamond taking place over both days. Winners of each division will also earn the chance to compete on the international stage at Wodcelona, an event which catered for over 1,200 participants in its most recent iteration in Barcelona, in September of this year.
You can download TheNationals app from the appstore to keep up to date on workouts, events and leaderboards and check back here tomorrow and Sunday for daily recaps.