Last week when we shared the news about the two cut format for this year’s CrossFit Games, it sparked a lot of debate about whether or not the Games should have cuts. Fans and athletes were split on the decision and there were plenty of reasons for and against.
Then this past Monday, Dave Castro weighed in during his Week in Review and shared that the cut format was solely his idea. Castro continued by sharing why he made the decision to reduce the field to 20 this year.
But the question I wanted to answer was…would last year’s leaderboard have changed based on the new 2023 scoring tables and cutting the field twice, leaving just 20 athletes to compete on Sunday.
Methodology
Field of 40
I began by recalculating the points earned for the events from Wednesday to Friday based on the scoring tables that will be used in 2023. The scoring tables are slightly different near the middle to bottom place. For example, 22nd place earned 38 points last year but will earn 37 points this year.
From there, I added up the points each athlete would have earned as of Friday night when the first cut to 30 would be applied.
Field of 30
Heading into Saturday’s events, I removed those who were ranked 31st or worst as of Friday night. Those athletes’ scores were also removed for Saturday and Sunday’s events.
I re-ranked the Saturday events based on the top 30 who advanced. For example, Elisa Fuliano finished 37th in the Sandbag Ladder last year. However, when removing the athletes who would have been cut, she would have finished 29th in a field of 30.
Athletes were then given points based on their event finishes on Saturday based on the scoring table for 30 athletes.
Similar to Friday night, after the Sandbag event on Saturday night I recalculated the total points to determine the top 20 athletes who would advance to Sunday.
Field of 20
Again, I removed the athletes who were cut the night prior and re-ranked the top 20 athletes’ performances on Sunday. The 20-athlete scoring table was then used to assign points for the final three events – Alpaca, Back Nine and Jackie Pro.
Recalculate Final Standings
With 21st-40th already set after the cuts, the remaining item was to calculate the final standings for the 20 athletes who advanced to Sunday.
Now we can look and see how different the final standings were last year compared to how they would look with this year’s new cut format (and scoring tables).
Observations
Women
Laura Horvath. The first question I had was whether Laura Horvath would advance to Sunday. Horvath had a slow start last year, but really turned it on over the weekend.
With the new scoring tables, Horvath would have safely been inside both cut lines. She would have been in 14th after Friday and 9th after Saturday.
Friday Cuts. Because this year’s cuts would be moved up one day, there would be some athletes who finished inside the top 30 who would not have advanced to Saturday. On the women’s side, Seungyeon Choi and Christine Kolenbrander would have failed to advance to the weekend. Choi and Kolenbrander finished 2022 in 26th and 27th, respectively. However, they were 32nd and 31st at the end of Friday night and would have been eliminated from the competition.
Saturday Cuts. Doing the same as Friday, I looked at the top 20 athletes based on the 30-athlete scoring tables for Saturday’s events. Karin Freyova, who finished 20th overall in 2022, would not have advanced to Sunday because she would have been in 23rd after the Sandbag Ladder.
Missed Event Performances. One of the arguments against the cuts is that it could lead to missed opportunities to see niche athletes win, or do very well in, an event. So what would we have missed last year?
For the women, we would not have witnessed six Top 10 event finishes. Only once would an athlete have missed the opportunity for a Top 3 event finish, that being Karin Freyova’s 3rd place finish on the Alpaca.
Here are the event performances we would have missed out on:
- Karin Freyova: 3rd place in Alpaca
- Sydney Michalyshen: 5th place in Sandbag Ladder
- Christine Kolenbrander: 6th place in Back Nine
- Seungyeon Choi: 7th place in Hat Trick
- Alex Gazan: 7th place in Back Nine
- Karin Freyova: 9th place in Jackie Pro
Impact to Final Standings. But where there any impacts to the final standings? Yes, but not the top 5.
However, Kara Saunders would have moved up to 6th overall (from 7th) and Emma Lawson would have moved down a spot to 7th overall.
Lucy Campbell would have moved up from 16th to 14th overall, leapfrogging Amanda Barnhart and Jacqueline Dalhstrom who each would have moved down a spot.
There was more movement in final standings for the athletes outside the top 20, mainly because they didn’t have the opportunity to compete on Saturday and/or Sunday. Some of that was good because they didn’t do as well on Saturday. In other instances, the 30-field scoring table helped them. But overall, the impact to these spots was not significant outside of Choi and Kolenbrander not finishing inside the top 30.
Men
Podium. On the men’s side, because the fight for the podium was close last year I wanted to know if the changes to the scoring tables would impact how the podium ended up.
The simple answer…no. Justin Medeiros still would have won, followed by Roman Khrennikov and Ricky Garard in 2nd and 3rd, respectively.
Friday Cuts. For the men’s cuts on Friday night, Andre Houdet was the only athlete who actually finished inside the top 30 at the end of the weekend to have been caught up in the Friday night cut. He could have been in 31st Friday night and eliminated from the competition. Instead, he was able to improve to 27th overall without the first cut last year.
Taking advantage of Houdet’s slow start was Colten Mertens. While he finished 32nd overall last year, he was 28th on Friday night and would have been able to advance to Saturday. But unfortunately for Mertens, he would not have been able to make it to Sunday as he would have finished 30th overall (still two spots better than his actual finish in 2022).
Saturday Cuts. Similar to the Friday cut, only one male athlete would have been impacted. Willy Georges finished 17th overall last year, but he would have been 23rd after Saturday night. Georges would not have been able to work his way up the leaderboard if the field had been cut to 20 athletes on Sunday.
Missed Event Performances. Similar to the women, we would have missed a few top 10 performances had the field been cut twice last year. The best performance we would not have seen was Willy Georges’ 2nd place finish on the Back Nine. Just like the women, there were six top 10 event performances that would have been missed.
- Willy Georges: 2nd place in Back Nine
- Andre Houdet: 8th place in Sandbag Ladder
- Cole Greashaber: 8th place in Rinse N’ Repeat
- Tudor Magda: 8th place in Hat Trick
- Tim Paulson: 8th place in Alpaca
- Willy Georges: 9th place in Jackie Pro
Impact to Final Standings. The only impact to the top 10 in the overall standings would have been that Gui Malheiros would improve to 9th while Bjorgvin Karl Gudmundsson would have dropped to 10th.
As mentioned above, Willy Georges’ 17th place finish would have been 23rd because he would not have been able to take the competition floor on Sunday. Outside of that, there were no other notable shifts to the final standings that are worth digging into.
Takeaways
While I am not personally a fan of cuts, doing this analysis has shown that adding a second cut would not have had a material change to the overall standings. Yes, if you are Willy Georges or Christine Kolenbrander, those cuts would have negatively impacted their final standings. But looking at the big picture, the standings were the standings with or without the cuts.
As for missed performances, Freyova’s 3rd place event finish and Georges’ 2nd place event finish would not have happened, but we didn’t miss out on any event wins or super memorable moments.
Of course, this analysis is based on just one year. Maybe this year the perfect event is programmed for someone like Jake Douglas or Colten Mertens and they have already been eliminated.
There are definitely arguments to be made that these athletes have earned the right to compete at the CrossFit Games and cutting their ‘test’ early doesn’t give them the ability to show their full potential. But after doing this analysis I don’t see the cuts impacting the overall standings or lowering the quality of performances on the competition field.
If anything else, we get to see the best of the best take the field with less downtime and on Sunday night we can confidently say we have crowned the Fittest on Earth.
