Yesterday, Dave Castro shared that a new ‘Top Training Camp Award‘ would handed out at the 2024 CrossFit Games. While the details on how it would be calculated are still not official, Castro did speculate on using the top 3 athletes (male and female, combined) and using the ‘Open’ scoring format.
This then had me thinking…who would have won the Top Training Camp Award in 2023? I mean, technically, Pedro crowned the best training camp at the CrossFit Games last year in the article he wrote last year.
But let’s take a look at the training camps through the lens of this new award structure…
Who’s Eligible
First of all, you must have three athletes self-identify (Castro’s words, not mine) as part of a training camp. Sorry Arielle Loewen, Pat Vellner (he’s HWPO now), Brent Fikowski, Laura Horvath, Jeff Adler…should I continue?
That leaves nine training camps in the running to win last year’s hypothetical award.
Mayhem Athlete
HWPO
PRVN
Brute Strength
The Training Plan
Underdogs Athletics
Training Think Tank
No Shortcuts Training
Training Culture
Other camps only had two or fewer athletes…and some just training by themselves in their garage.
So Who Would Have Won?
Well, there is an obvious advantage by having more athletes from a training camp qualify for the CrossFit Games, especially when only the three best count towards the Top Training Camp Award. But on the other hand, three standout performances are all that is needed.
Mayhem Athlete
Mayhem had three athletes inside the top 10. However, they were not the only camp to accomplish such a feat. Roman Khrennikov (3rd), Lazar Djukic (9th) and Paige Powers (10th) were the top three athletes from Mayhem, giving them 22 points.
Brute Strength
There was a lot of talk heading into last year’s CrossFit Games that Matt Torres was probably the unofficial coach of the year. The reason? He had five athletes qualify for the CrossFit Games.
Like Mayhem, Brute Strength had three top 10 finishes. Dallin Pepper (5th), Emma Cary (8th) and Danielle Brandon (9th) would be the athletes who counted for Brute Strength. And if you do the math, their total was also 22 points.
So last year it would have come down to a tiebreaker between Mayhem and Brute Strength. If the tiebreaker was the best finish, Mayhem wins. If the tiebreaker is the best finish of the third-place athlete, Brute Strength wins.
So if you were to create a tiebreaker, what would it be?
As for the other camps, no other camp had two athletes inside the Top 10.
Looking Ahead to 2024
Looking backwards is fun, but what about this upcoming year? Which camps will be in the running in 2024? Mayhem will be back in the running again this year, but HWPO should be in the hunt especially with Pat Vellner and Brooke Wells now on the roster. Brute’s line-up is slimmed down to Dallin Pepper, James Sprague and Danielle Brandon (if she calls herself a Brute Athlete). PRVN will also be in the mix, especially with the recent additions coming from Underdogs Athletics.
While there are certainly plenty of top athletes who won’t count towards the Top Training Camp Award, it will be fun to follow the camps throughout the weekend.
