The Age Group In-Affiliate Semifinals were April 3-6. This year, with the new season format, CrossFit implemented new judging requirements for all athletes who take part in the qualifying stage for the 2025 CrossFit Games. A week after scores were due it now appears that there are numerous instances where these requirements were not met.
This year for In-Affiliate Semifinals, an athlete needed to perform the workouts at a CrossFit affiliate in good standing and have a dedicated floor judge and a head judge. Multiple athletes could use the same head judge if doing the workout at the same time.
Both judges (head and floor judge) are required to hold an active CrossFit Level 1/OL1 credential or higher, complete the 2025 Judges Course and the Advanced Judges course. Both judges also must be on-site (obviously) and introduced in the athlete’s video for each workout.
It is unclear how CrossFit became aware that athletes were not using judges with the proper credentials, but in a statement released on Friday CrossFit addressed the situation.
CrossFit’s statement:
“It has come to our attention that a small number of judges for the 2025 Age-Group Semifinals athletes had expired CrossFit credentials.
According to the competition requirements stated in the 2025 Rulebook, an athlete’s workout must be judged by both a Floor Judge and a Head Judge who hold a current CF-L1 or higher to receive a valid score.Â
Many of the involved athletes took the extra step to secure a Head Judge from an outside entity, where they expected a qualified judging environment. Unfortunately, they did not receive that.”
The “outside entity” appears to be referring to athletes who completed their workouts at CrossFit Mayhem with oversight by the Association of Fitness Judges (AFJ). During the Mayhem Classic athletes were able to do their Semifinals workouts at CrossFit Mayhem with the AFJ handling the judging responsibilities.
However, in looking at the leaderboard, there are multiple athletes who did their workouts at CrossFit Mayhem with their scores zeroed out. It appears that the common thread among these zeroed out scores is that Brian Clapp was the head judge.
Clapp is the Director of Competition for the AFJ. In his bio on the AFJ and on his Instagram profile it states that Clapp has his Level 2 certification.
However, it appears that Clapp’s certification has expired. A search on CrossFit’s Trainer Directory comes up empty when searching for Brian Clapp.
I reached out to the AFJ for comment regarding the situation. A representative from the AFJ returned the following statement, “We [AFJ] are going to refrain from any public remarks/statements until after the close of video review.”
But while the AFJ appears to be the main discussion in the community, there are other athletes around the world who have also been impacted by this requirement. Numerous examples can be seen on the Age Group leaderboard where scores have been zeroed out. A search of the judges for those workouts yields no results similar to the situation with Brian Clapp.
So What’s Next?
While these athletes have had their scores zeroed out, CrossFit is making a one-time exception to “ensure a fair outcome and uphold the standards of the competition”. For the affected athletes in the Age Group In-Affiliate Semifinals, CrossFit’s internal review team will be conducting a full video review of each of the affected workout submissions.
Following the review, athletes will receive a new, modified score based on the outcome of the review. All scores impacted by this review process will be updated by Monday, April 21, when the leaderboard is finalized.
Team & Individual In-Affiliate Semifinals
As stated above, CrossFit said this is a one-time exception and will not be applied for the Team and Individual In-Affiliate Semifinals occurring over the next several weeks. CrossFit added that it is the athlete’s responsibility to ensure their judges meet the requirements.
For the specific judging requirements, refer to Section 2.02 and 2.07 of the 2025 CrossFit Games rulebook.
The Team In-Affiliate Semifinals are April 24-27. The Individual In-Affiliate Semifinals are May 1-4.
