After five weeks and five grueling, boundary-pushing workouts, Sara Sigmundsdottir and Mat Fraser have been announced as the winners of the 2017 CrossFit Open.
Sigmundsdottir‘s victory was narrowly won. She came in first with 34 points, followed by Kari Pearce in second place with 38 points, Camille LeBlanc-Bazinet in third with 39 points, Jamie Greene in fourth with 91 points, and Cassidy Lance-McWherter in fifth with 117 points.
Previous Reebok CrossFit® Games champions Annie Thorisdottir came seventh with 127 points, Katrin Davidsdottir in tenth with 157 points, and Samantha Briggs in twelfth with 184 points.
On the men’s side, first place was won by a much wider margin. 2016 CrossFit Games Champion Mat Fraser won with 40 points, while second place went to Noah Olsen with 118 points. After that, Alex Vigneault came third with 139 points, Karl Gudmundsson with 222 points, and Anthony Davis in fifth with 250 points.
Four-time Games Champion Rich Froning landed at eleventh with 381 points (tied with Patrick Vellner), and 2015’s Games champion Ben Smith came 41st with 730 points.
The first qualifying stage of the Reebok CrossFit® Games, the purpose of the CrossFit Open is to find the fittest athletes in each region so they can then be sent on to Regionals. There are seventeen regions all together: twelve are in North America, and the rest are effectively the other continents of the world (Latin America, Europe, Asia, Africa, and Australia).
The CrossFit Open is also a great opportunity for any athlete at any level to participate in the same workouts that thousands of other CrossFit fans are doing all over the planet. As far as the shared community aspect of CrossFit goes, the Open may be the most foundational event of the entire sport — anybody at any affiliate anywhere can take part, and the same workouts (or scaled versions of them) are being attempted by all of them.
The top athletes from each of the seventeen regions will go on to compete at one of the eight regional events, which will be held over three weekends between May 19 and June 4. The first weekend, May 19-21, will see regionals held in Albany, New York and San Antonio, Texas. For teenage and Masters athletes, their qualifier will be held online over four days.
Looking Back At the 2017 CrossFit Open
This was one of the toughest competitions we’ve ever seen and literally hundreds of thousands of people competed worldwide, creating one gigantic, sweaty, pulsating organism. We can’t definitively prove this, but we’re pretty sure the Open brought more people together to do the same workouts with the same goals than any other endeavor in history. At the very least, no larger number of people has ever cursed so much at Dave Castro.
Here are three of our favorite moments.
When this 18-year-old finished 17.3 faster than Rich Froning.
When Alethea Boon came third worldwide in 17.2 just seven months after tearing her Achilles.
And when this 93-year-old athlete from Australia crushed 17.1 with what looks like a 10-pound dumbbell. Talk about inspiring.
https://www.instagram.com/p/BRBGywxBQ43/
It’s been a great ride. On to Regionals.
Featured image via @mathewfras and @sarasigmunds on Instagram.