Bethany Shadburne and Pete Shaw headed down to Argentina over the weekend to compete at the SouthFit CrossFit Challenge. In its inaugural year as a Sanctional event, Shadburne and Shaw took the title and have earned themselves an invite to compete at the 2020 CrossFit Games.
On the women’s side, it was anticipated that Bethany Shadburne and Maddie Sturt would be battling it out all weekend long for the top spot on the podium. That prediction panned out and the two Games veterans found themselves in 1st and 2nd on Sunday night.
The worst finish for both women was the 1RM Snatch event. Shadburne finished 10th while Sturt took 17th. The rest of the way both women never finished outside the top 4 on any event. Shadburne, however, had two event victories and finished just ahead of Sturt on all but one other event.
Shadburne finished with 765 points to take 1st place overall. Sturt ended up with 723 points for 2nd place. And CrossFit Filthy 150’s female invite, Andrea Solberg, traveled to Argentina to finish in 3rd place.
The men’s competition featured two well-known Games veterans from Australia – Rob Forte and Zeke Grove. The fight for the top spot on the podium, however, came down to another Aussie, Jay Crouch, and Canadian Peter Shaw.
After the first few events on Friday, it was clear that it was going to be a fight between Shaw and Crouch. Grove started out slowly with a 15th and 8th place finish on the first two events and was never able to recover. Argentinian Gonzalo Duro would end up taking the final podium spot with consistent performances all weekend.
But for Shaw and Crouch, the 1st place spot and a Games invite would come down to the final event. Crouch held a 13-point advantage over Shaw going into Event 7. Shaw would get the nod on the Event with an event victory and 100 points. Crouch would end up taking 6th place on the event, good for only 75 points.
Shaw finished with two event victories to steal the win from Crouch. Shaw will now be heading to Madison, Wisconsin, to compete in his first CrossFit Games.
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Cover photo provided Victoria Costello Photography (Instagram | Website)
