The Individual Quarterfinals leaderboard was finalized on Monday night. As has been documented throughout the week, penalties from the video review process has ended the season early for some big names in the sport. In total, 410 athletes received a scoring adjustment on the first workout of the 2024 CrossFit Quarterfinals.
2023 CrossFit Games athletes Paige Powers, Nick Mathew and Sydney Wells were among the 73 athletes who were originally inside the Top 40 in their region to advance to Semifinals, but are now on the outside looking in following a penalty.
In the day following the closing of the Quarterfinals leaderboard, many athletes impacted by the video review process took to Instagram to share their thoughts.
In their posts, many were questioning whether CrossFit should have included a movement that ended up incurring so many penalties. The athletes also expressed frustration at having their season ended over a video review. “I think what hurts most is that this feels unfair- like my season was taken from me. Only top scores were reviewed, so who’s to say how many of the scores between a qualifying spot and 796 had their video viewed,” said Sydney Wells in her post on Instagram.
Nick Mathew called the situation ridiculous. Mathew shared in his caption, “It’s pretty upsetting that this is how my season ends… I’ve been chasing my dreams of competing at a high level in this sport for over 7 years… to finally have made it, repeated it, and now it been taken away for something as silly as this is ridiculous.”
The penalties have spurred much debate within the community with some asking if the online portion of the competition needed to be adjusted or even removed. On this week’s Death By episode on Talking Elite Fitness, Tim Paulson, James Hobart and Adrian Conway weighed in.
On Monday, Dave Castro took the opportunity on his Week in Review to address the situation. Castro essentially said that the rules are what they are this season and that when looking at the bigger picture, more athletes did the workouts without penalty than those who ended up receiving a major penalty.
