While most have already moved on to looking ahead to Week 2 of the CrossFit Regionals, some are still upset over Event 1 at the East Regional. During the 1st heat of Event 1 on Friday, several of the Assault AirRunners were not working. The monitors would not turn on and the judges had to use a back-up plan to measure the distance run.
Two of the first three athletes that made it onto the run, Craig Kenney and Marquan Jones, had issues with their AirRunner. Kenney is shown yelling at his judge to hit the start button so it would begin counting his distance. [The athletes are not allowed to touch the monitor during the event.]
It appears that the judges tell Kenney to keep running and that they would track his distance manually by counting the little white dot(s) on the treadmill portion of the AirRunner.
The problem is that the manual counting did not appear to be correct. Kenney is credited for running 1,200 meters (3/4 of a mile) in under 3 minutes. In the video below, at the 20:25 minute mark, Kenney finishes his double unders and moves to the AirRunner. He begins running 13:45 into the event.
By 14:34 on the event timer, Kenney is credited with running 400 meters in just 49 seconds, or a 3:16 per mile pace. During which time Kenney stopped for a moment to get a judges’ attention. It is clear that Kenney was not running that pace.
As more athletes get on the AirRunner they are appear to get frustrated that the monitor is not working. Daniel Viger and another athlete (in red) raise their arms up at 15:04 on the event clock.
By 16:05, just 2:20 after getting onto the AirRunner, Kenney’s chess piece is on the 1,200-meter mark. No other athlete has moved past the 400-meter mark. Cody Mooney, who got on the AirRunner five seconds after Kenney, still had not been credited with running 400 meters.
Jones’ chess piece was moved to the 800-meter mark at 16:18, a time of 2:14 after getting on the AirRunner. At one point, the CrossFit Games camera zoomed in on Kenney’s monitor showing 0:00 across the board.
After less than 5 minutes, Kenney’s chess piece had been moved to the 2,000-meter mark. Fast forward to 36 minutes into the event and Josh Workman, whose monitor was also not working working, reaches the final 400 meters 30 seconds before Jones and Kenney. Workman’s judge is shown moving his head each time the white stripe passes by. However, Kenney is the first off the AirRunner followed by Jones. Workman finished almost 2:00 behind Kenney.
Workman reached the final 400 meters at 34:00 and was not told to advance to the finish line until 38:09, a full four minutes. Watching him run, there was no way Workman was running a 16-minute mile pace.
With all of this, Cody Mooney’s coach, Drew Crandall of Misfit Athletics, took to Instagram to share what happened with the CrossFit community.
Mooney finished 13th on Event 1, earning him 54 points. Kenney took 1st and Jones 2nd, earning 100 and 95 points, respectively. At the end of the weekend, Mooney finished 26 points behind Jones and 96 points behind Kenney.
While it is unclear where everyone would have finished, it is clear that there was an issue with the scores on Event 1 in the East Regional. Twenty-six points is not hard to make up if each athlete moved just a few positions. If Jones had finished in 5th and Mooney in 8th, Mooney would be in 5th. Unfortunately, right now it can only be speculated where each athlete would have finished had the monitors worked and it was a level playing field.
At this time, it is unclear where a protest was filed with CrossFit after the event. CrossFit has yet to make an announcement or comment on this situation.
