2022 CrossFit Games Demo Team — Who’s Testing the Events in Madison?
The 2022 NOBULL CrossFit Games are set for Aug. 3-7, 2022, in Madison, WI. Forty men, 40 women, 38 teams, 180 age-group competitors, and 30 adaptive athletes (Lower Extremity, Upper Extremity, and Neuromuscular divisions) will be in Madison vying for the title of Fittest on Earth®. Before the release of the workouts for the Individuals, six elite athletes who narrowly missed qualifying for the Games are invited to help test the movements for each. They are known as the CrossFit Games Demo Team.
The 2022 CrossFit Games Demo Team consists of the following six athletes:
2022 CrossFit Games Demo Team
- Alison Scudds — Team Captain
- Feeroozeh Saghafi
- Kloie Wilson
- James Sprague
- Mitch Stevenson
- Royce Dunne
Per CrossFit HQ’s press release, the above “experienced CrossFit athletes are selected to demonstrate the movements in each event at the CrossFit Games to the field of Games athletes.”
This is Scudds’ second consecutive year as the CrossFit Games Demo Team captain. In 2021, she led the team of James Newbury, Chyna Cho, Christine Kolenbrander, Khan Porter, and Tola Morakinyo.
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Scudds running it back as the captain of the Demo Team shouldn’t come as a surprise. She has one Games appearance in the Team division in 2019, ranking fifth overall as a member of team Central Beasts. She made it to the Atlas Games Semifinal in 2022, landing 12th overall.
Saghafi narrowly missed Games qualification in the Semifinal stage of the 2022 CrossFit season. She finished seventh overall at The Granite Games after ranking 50th worldwide in the Open and 16th in the online Quarterfinals. She repeated her seventh-place rank in the Last-Chance Qualifier (LCQ). Although she won’t be competing for the title of Fittest Woman on Earth® in 2022, she still made it to Madison to grapple with the workouts. Saghafi made her Games debut in 2019 with a 24th-place finish.
Wilson has yet to reach the CrossFit Games as a competitor, but her resume thus far is a model of consistency. In 2021, she ranked seventh in the West Coast Classic Semifinal. In 2022, she improved to sixth at the Granite Games, where she never ranked lower than seventh in any workout. She stayed the course and placed sixth in the 2022 LCQ.
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At age 20, Sprague has quite the CrossFit resume. He competed at the Games twice — in 2017 in the Boys 14-15 division, finishing fourth, and in 2019 in the Boys 16-17 division, finishing fifth. He reached his first Semifinal in 2021 with a 22nd-place rank at the West Coast Classic. In 2022, he battled in the Syndicate Crown Semifinal to rank sixth. That earned him a spot in the 2022 LCQ, where he took seventh place.
Stevenson made his CrossFit Games debut as an Individual in 2018 with a 32nd-place finish. He returned to the Games as a member of team CrossFit i1uvit in 2021, ranking 10th overall. He returned to Individual competition in 2022 to rank eighth overall at the Mid-Atlantic CrossFit Challenge and qualify for the LCQ. A sixth-place finish in the LCQ didn’t land him a spot at the 2022 Games but did earn him his spot on the Demo Team.
Dunne is the most seasoned Games competitor on the 2022 Demo Team. He’s competed at the Games four times — twice in the Team division and twice as an Individual. His Games debut in 2016 was as a part of team CrossFit Torian, which ranked 40th overall. In the 2018 Games, he reached 34th place as an Individual. He returned to Team competition in 2019, helping Invictus Boston claim 12th place. In 2021, he ranked 16th overall as an Individual. Dunne narrowly missed reaching the 2022 Games, ranked fourth in the 2022 Torian Pro Semifinal — an event he won in 2021 — and closed out his season in eighth at the 2022 LCQ.
Featured image: @crossfitgames on Instagram