This afternoon CrossFit released how they will be calculating the Strength of Field of the seven Semifinals that will ultimately determine how many qualifying spots each Semifinal will get to the CrossFit Games. The news comes a week after the first-ever worldwide rankings were released.
So let’s breakdown how the 40 qualifying spots to the CrossFit Games are determined…
Minimum Guaranteed Spots
North America East: 5
North America West: 5
Europe: 5
Oceania: 3
South America: 2
Asia: 2
Africa: 1
Total guaranteed spots: 23
The table above outlines how many men and women are guaranteed to qualify out of each Semifinal for the 2023 CrossFit Games. Out of the 40 individual spots, 23 have been guaranteed.
The remaining 17 qualifying spots will be based on the Strength of Field.
Strength of Field Calculation
As Adrian Bozman hinted at back in November, the Strength of Field calculation is based on the D’Hondt method. Primarily used for allocating seats within a government, the D’Hondt method has been used to award seats based on proportional representation.
For the CrossFit Games, this means the D’Hondt method will be used to determine how the remaining 17 non-guaranteed spots to the CrossFit Games are distributed between the seven Semifinal competitions.
What is the calculation?
The D’Hondt method is an iterative process that awards a seat, or in the case of the CrossFit Games – a qualifying spot, to a particular Semifinal. The calculation will be based on the Top 100 worldwide rankings.
The formula is as follows:
Unless you are familiar with the D’Hondt method or just like statistics/mathematics, you’re probably still a little confused. Let’s actually look at the calculations based on the current worldwide top 100.
To do this, we will refer to Mike Halpin’s new Instagram page, Known & Knowable, where he breaks down the top 100 men and women by region.
Men
Here is the breakdown of the Top 100 men heading into the 2023 CrossFit Open:
From this, you can see 38 of the Top 100 men are from the North America East Region followed by 30 in the Europe region.
The D’Hondt method will award the “first” additional spot to the North America East Region. From there, the calculation shown above starts to take effect. Here is the calculation for the men’s field based on the current worldwide rankings:
Of the 17 additional spots, seven (7) will go to NA East. Another six (6) go to Europe and four (4) go to NA West.
Based on the current rankings, the following is how many spots each region would send to the Games:
North America East: 12
North America West: 9
Europe: 11
Oceania: 3
South America: 2
Asia: 2
Africa: 1
Total: 40
Women
Here is the breakdown of the Top 100 women heading into the 2023 CrossFit Open:
Just like the men, the women’s top 100 is dominated by athletes in the North America East and Europe Regions. And similar to the breakdown of additional spots, the women have almost the exact same breakdown.
Of the 17 additional spots, seven (7) will go to NA East. Another six (6) go to Europe and four (3) go to NA West and the final spot, for now, goes to Oceania.
Based on the current rankings, the following is how many spots each region would send to the Games:
North America East: 12
North America West: 8
Europe: 11
Oceania: 4
South America: 2
Asia: 2
Africa: 1
Total: 40
So right now, Oceania gets a 4th qualifying spot. However, once Tia does not compete in 2023, Oceania will lose the spot to North America West, bringing the men’s and women’s allocations to the exact same number.
Stay tuned to The Barbell Spin as we bring you the best coverage of the 2023 CrossFit Games season!
