Wodland Fest is one of this year’s In-Person Qualifying Events for the 2025 CrossFit Games season. The new competition, hosted by MAD Events – the same group who runs the Madrid Championship, just announced that even more athletes will qualify in the elite division from the online qualifier.
Originally, Wodland Fest was slated to feature 20 men and 20 women in the elite individual divisions. These athletes would be compete for a spot at the CrossFit Games.
However, based on Wodland Fest’s Instagram page there are also quite a few athletes who received a wildcard invite to compete. Those athletes include Aniol Ekai, Sara Sigmundsdottir, Roman Khrennikov, Matilde Garnes, Fabian Beneito, Calum Clements, Lucy Campbell, Spencer Panchik, Mariana Meza, Luis Cuellar, Tiago Luzes, Maribel Gallardo, Silvia Garcia and Elisa Fuliano.
Until earlier this week the expectation was that the top 20 from the online qualifier plus the wildcard invites above would compete in person for a shot at the CrossFit Games.
That all changed on Monday when Wodland Fest announced it was increasing the number of athletes who would advance to the IPQE from the online qualifier. In that announcement, the top 80 men and top 70 women will now receive an invite to compete in Málaga, Spain, on April 25-27 in the elite division.
“Due to the great interest generated among elite athletes and the high number of requests to increase the number of qualifying spots, the organization has decided to offer more opportunities to those who have joined the event through the qualifier to be part of WODLAND,” read the caption on the Instagram post.
When looking at the online qualifier, 97 men and 72 women submitted scores. Thus, only two women in the online qualifier will not advance to the live in-person competition.
The shift will make Wodland Fest the largest elite competition of all the In-Person Qualifying Events. Regardless of the size, only two men and two women will earn an invite to compete at the 2025 CrossFit Games.
And while the massive field may seem unmanageable, the same organizers ran the 2022 Madrid Championship where the individual elite divisions had 66 men and 58 women take the competition floor.
One the questions, however, regarding the massive individual divisions is how Wodland Fest can program for these athletes plus all of the community divisions (RX Team, Masters Teams, 35+ Masters Individuals, Advanced Teams, Intermediate Teams, Scaled Teams, Masters Scaled Teams and Beginner Teams.
If it is anything like the 2022 Madrid Championship, the workouts will be skewed towards the shorter time domains. For the top athletes the longest workout was less than 12 minutes.
The 2025 Wodland Fest is April 25-27 at the José MarÃa MartÃn Carpena Sports Palace in Málaga, Spain.
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