Brent Fikowski has been a staple at the CrossFit Games ever since his appearance back in 2016. With four top 4 finishes at the Games, including twice on the podium, Fikowski has always been a lock to make it to Games every year. This year, however, Fikowski is a bit further down the leaderboard than everyone would expect.
If you search the CrossFit Open leaderboard this afternoon and look for Brent, he won’t be on the first page or two. Instead, he is currently in 3,056th at the time of this article and sliding further down as more athletes post their scores ahead of the 5pm PST deadline.
Fikowski shared that he had to do the 20 ring muscle-ups one at a time due to an arm injury. He ended up scoring 213 reps on 23.1, meaning he completed one full round of the long chipper and knocked out 13 calories on his second trip on the rower before the 14-minute time cap rang out. That is a far cry from his 260 reps on 14.4, which was good for 7th in the world.
Also back in 2014, his 213 reps that would have been good for ~600th place worldwide.
The good news, though, is that to advance to Quarterfinals, it only requires an athlete to finish within the top 10% of Open athletes in their region. Currently, Fikowski sits in 407th in the North America West region, well ahead of the top 10% cutline at 4,180th.
So while Fikowski is operating at less than full capacity, it’s still well ahead of what is needed to advance to Quarterfinals. And that’s all he is looking to do right now. “The goal of this CrossFit Open will be to qualify for the Quarterfinals and do everything I can to be in better fighting shape by then,” explained Fikowski.
It is unclear how or when Fikowski injured his arm. He was at Wodapalooza last month where he competed in both the individual and team competition. He and his teammates Pat Vellner and Jeff Adler ended up winning the team competition.
Since Wodapalooza, he has shared workouts to his Instagram. And as recently as February 10, Fikowski shared clips of his workouts during a warm stretch in Canada where he was doing legless rope climbs and deficit parallette handstand-ups.
In a year where we have seen quite athletes withdraw this season due to injury, let’s keep our fingers crossed that Brent can do what is needed to advance and heal in time for Quarterfinals next month.
