In recent years, the Rogue Invitational has invited a minimum of five men and five women from the Q, it’s online qualifier. Those five spots were always announced ahead of time. This year, however, Rogue has not announced how many athletes will earn an invite to compete at the Rogue Invitational in Scotland this fall.
But why?
The rumor is that Rogue might be changing the field size this year and that more athletes from the online qualifier could be invited. But if more were going to be invited from the Q, why not announce that to drum up more interest in what has historically been one of the toughest qualifiers in the space?
A little background…
If you don’t know, the Rogue Invitational has kept the field size down to just 20 men and 20 women in previous years. Up until last year, Rogue would generally invite the top 15 athletes from the CrossFit Games and 5 from the online qualifier. Of course, Rogue would sometimes veer from that and invite athletes of their choosing…like Annie Thorisdottir in 2022.
Last year, Rogue implemented its new Rogue Points System, a multi-year ranking system based on previous performances from the CrossFit Games season and the Rogue Invitational. This year the Points System has added TYR Wodapalooza, the World Fitness Project, and the CrossFit Games’ In-Person Qualifying Events.
So what’s happening this year?
The online qualifier concluded on Sunday. The leaderboard has been published, but is not yet final as the Rogue team conducts its video review process – probably one of the most rigorous and strict out there.
Rogue has also started announcing its automatic invites on Instagram. And this is where it gets interesting…
Rogue likes to make its announcements from lowest ranked to the highest ranked (i.e. Tia is the last one to be announced). This year for the women, Gracie Walton was the athlete to be announced. She is currently ranked 22nd.
From there, Rogue has been essentially moving up the rankings…with a few exceptions. For example, Anikha Greer and Aimee Cringle have both been skipped throughout this invite announcement process.
Greer is currently ranked 21st (but was likely behind Walton prior to the most recent WFP Tour Stop) and Cringle is 14th, behind Emma Tall and Manon Angonese (who was just announced today. Obviously, we don’t know if an invite was extended to Greer or Cringle and they declined or if Rogue just didn’t invite them.
So far nine women have been announced. Angonese, the most recent announcement is ranked 12th. That means there are 11 women ahead of Angonese that potentially will be announced over the coming days.
Do all 11 accept? There are a couple wildcards. The most obvious is Gabi Migala, who is ranked 4th. Migala tore her Achilles at the 2024 Rogue Invitational and has been working to get back on the competition floor. But would she be ready enough to compete?
There’s also Alex Gazan, Alexis Raptis and Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr. Gazan just recently withdrew from the TYR Cup. Raptis skipped last year and has been dealing with a back injury over the past several months. And then there’s Tia…who knows what her schedule is going to look like.
Outside of those four athletes, I would be shocked if any of the remaining athletes decline an invite. That puts the total number of invites up to 16. And I would not be surprised if one or two of those in question accept.
The reason why I say that is because of what’s happening on the men’s side.Â
Colten Mertens was the first male athlete to be announced. He’s ranked 21st. Henrik Haapalainen, who also tore his Achilles at the last Rogue Invitational, received an invite. He’s ranked 20th.
After that, however, Harry Lightfoot, Travis Mayer and Saxon Panchik were skipped over. We know Mayer and Panchik did not receive an invite because both ended up doing the online qualifier.
From there, every male athlete up the rankings has been announced as accepting their invite. Gui Malheiros, Noah Ohlsen, Chandler Smith, Austin Hatfield, Sam Kwant, Jonne Koski and BKG.
If everyone ahead of BKG in the rankings is invited and accepts their invite, that would be 18 men who receive an automatic invite.
How Does This Impact Online Qualifiers?
With a scenario of 18 men and 16-19 women receiving automatic invites, Rogue can go one of two ways…
1. They could keep the field to 20 athletes and only invite a handful of athletes from the online qualifier to round out the field, or
2. Rogue could increase the field size. While 30 athletes might seem like the next possibility, I don’t foresee 10+ athletes getting an invite from the qualifier. Plus, if they did I think they would have announced this ahead of time to get more people to do the qualifier.
Instead, I could see a field of 24 athletes where the competition floor is split into 8 lanes instead of 10.
What Do I Think?
The payouts on the Rogue Invitational website still point to 20 athletes. Combining this with not mentioning how many will qualify, I see Rogue inviting less people than previous years.
If I was going to guess, we will see a 20-athlete field with 18 automatic invites and 2 from the online qualifier for both men and women. That would mean Saxon Panchik, Uldis Upenieks, Elisa Fuliano and Paige Powers would earn an invite if the qualifier leaderboard doesn’t change.
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