Athletes across the country descended once again to Spartanburg, South Carolina, for Crash Crucible. Hosted by J.R. Howell at CrossFit Crash, the fourth annual competition featured numerous Semifinals athletes and headlined by CrossFit Games veterans Colten Mertens and James Sprague.
But after seven scored events through three days, Austin Hatfield and CrossFit Crash’s Lindsey Lane ended up on top of the standings.
Hatfield, who missed qualifying for the CrossFit Games this year by one spot, held off Colten Mertens by five points. Mertens won the last four events and charged up the leaderboard on Sunday, but couldn’t catch up to Hatfield who never finished worse than 9th in any event. Jack Rozema finished in 3rd overall ahead of Sprague in 4th.
On the women’s side, Lindsey Lane won the 7th and final event to beat Lydia Fish by just 1.14 points. Heading into Sunday, Emma Harvang led the field, but struggled on the final three events where she dropped down to 8th overall. That left Lane and Fish alone fighting for the top spot. And in 3rd place, Callista Lang passed Emily Beroth on the final event to nab the final spot on the podium.
For the second consecutive year, Crash Crucible utilized performance-based scoring rather than the “points per place” format used in most competitions. Performance-based scoring, created by Tyler Watkins, awards points based on relative performance to the field. This format awards stand-out performances by lowering the scores of athletes who fall well behind the best pace, making it possible to gain (or lose) points quickly.
Men’s Final Standings
1. Austin Hatfield (600.92)
2. Colten Mertens (595.71)
3. Jack Rozema (563.54)
4. James Sprague (559.04)
5. Daniel Kuc (553.85)
Women’s Final Standings
1. Lindsey Lane (565.26)
2. Lydia Fish (564.12)
3. Callista Lang (471.34)
4. Emily Beroth (470.17)
5. Ellie Hiller (446.10)
Full Standings can be found here.
First place earned $5,000, 2nd took home $3,000 and 3rd received $1,000.
And for the first time at Crash Crucible, a Masters division was introduced. Mark Hutchinson and Caroline Klutz took the title.
