Yesterday afternoon all eyes were on Sasha Nievas’ video submission for 23.2. In the video at the 18:30 mark, the video had a “ghosting” effect where Sasha’s judge appeared twice given the impression that the video was edited or spliced. The talk on social media exploded yesterday afternoon when Andrew Hiller went live on YouTube and showed the video in question.
Following the firestorm of comments on social media, Nic Johnston, PRVN’s CEO, jumped on The Barbell Spin podcast to clear things up and explain what happened.
According to Johnston, Sasha did the workout from Argentina, where she is from, and used the WODProof app to record her workout since she was not doing it at an affiliate. In addition to the WODProof app recording, she used a GoPro as a backup camera.
When the WODProof app was set up for 23.2, it was set to a 14:00 clock as it was not adjusted from last week’s 23.1 time cap. So when Sasha was doing the workout, the clock stopped but continued recording.
Because the rules state a clock must be shown throughout a video submission, Sasha uploaded the GoPro video directly to YouTube. Unfortunately, GoPro records videos in 10-minute segments and stitches the separate recordings together for one “uncut” video. The problem was the ghosting effect that occurred at the time where the two videos were stitched together.
Once Nic and the PRVN team became aware of the issue, they contacted Sasha and had her upload the WODProof video ahead of the 23.2 submission deadline. The PRVN team then contacted CrossFit to explain what happened and CrossFit has approved the video submission with regard to the timer being stopped at 14 minutes.
So at this time, Sasha’s score for 23.2 is up on the Games leaderboard where she sits in 26th overall after the first two weeks of the Open.
