2024 CrossFit Games North America East Semifinals Day 2 Women’s Recap: Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr Sweeps Saturday
If anyone was still doubting whether six-time CrossFit Games champion Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr could come back as strong as she was a year after giving birth to a baby girl, surely the doubts have vanished.
At the halfway point of the North America East Semifinals in Knoxville, TN, Toomey-Orr is three for three and has a perfect 300 points.
With Friday and Saturday’s three event wins, Toomey-Or has logged 12 straight Seminals event wins, dating back to the Mid-Atlantic CrossFit Challenge in 2021.
Behind Toomey-Orr, with 270 points, is last year’s Games silver medalist, Emma Lawson, while two-time Games competitor Alexis Raptis sits in third. Two other Games veterans, Danielle Brandon and Paige Semenza, round out the top five.
5 rounds for time:
- 100 double-unders
- 20 toes-to-bar
- 10 front squats
Time cap: 18 minutes
Men: 225 pounds
Women: 155 pounds
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Lexi Neely put up a tough time to beat in the second heat of Event 2, a time that wouldn’t fall until Toomey-Orr took the floor in the final heat.
Coming off a win on day one’s lone event, Toomey-Orr led from start to finish, missing the world record time put up by Laura Horvath at the European Semifinals (11:24.19) by a little more than two seconds.
The third-best time in the event belonged to Canada’s Erica Folo.
- Looking to qualify for her first CrossFit Games, she worked her way through the double-unders, toes-to-bar, and front squats with ease, a performance that had her sitting second overall after two events.
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Worth noting: Leading up to Semifinals, Folo traveled to Kitchener, Ontario, to do a mock Semifinals weekend with Lawson and Jack Farlow. She told the Morning Chalk Up that Lawson beat her on every single event that weekend, but today in Knoxville, Folo finished Event 2 40 seconds ahead of Lawson.
Two athletes who struggled in Event 2 were Haley Adams and Amanda Barnhart.
Adams, second after day one, had a hard time with the 155-pound squats, and her form started to break down on the double-unders. Barnhart, who was ninth after day one, had no problem with the squats, but her toes-to-bar and double-unders looked fatigued.
- Barnhart finished 22nd and Adams finished 35th, dropping them to 13th and 14th, respectively, after two events.
One big thing: Anikha Greer, who missed qualifying for the Games by one spot first as a teenager and then again as an individual in both 2021 and 2023, dug herself a hole in Event 1, when she finished 34th. But she looked like a new athlete on Saturday, easily winning her heat.
- Greer’s time of 11:59.32 was good enough for fourth overall, helping her jump into 15th with one event left on Saturday.
7 rounds for time:
- 10-calorie Echo bike
- 1 legless rope climb
- 10 box jump-overs
- 1 legless rope climb
Time cap: 16 minutes
Men: 30-inch box, 15-foot rope
Women: 24-inch box, 15-foot rope
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Saturday’s second event belonged, once again, to Toomey-Orr, whose time of 10:33 was 13 seconds faster than the next finisher, Adams.
The second-place spot on Event 3 helped Adams jump back onto the right side of the cutline. After taking last season off to take care of her mental health, Adams enters Sunday in 10th overall.
- “I just feel like I’m overall in much better shape physically and mentally than I ever was, and I’m taking care of myself. I’m having fun out here again,” Adams said in an interview after Event 3.
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Right behind Adams in Event 3 was a hard-charging Lawson, who sits 30 points behind Toomey-Orr in second overall.
Meanwhile, Greer, still competing in the first heat, continued to dig herself out of her day one hole. She won her heat again, and her time held up for an eighth-place finish in the event.
She enters day three in 14th overall, 16 points away from Brooke Wells, the current Games gatekeeper occupying the final qualifying position (11th).
The big picture: With three events to go and 50 percent of the points still on the table, Sunday will be all about watching the bubble.
Fee Saghafi (ninth), Adams (10th), and Wells (11th) are currently above the cutline, while Shelby Neal, Neely, and Greer are in 12th, 13th, and 14th, respectively.
That being said, only 28 points separate 14th from eighth, so any one of those six athletes still has a great shot at earning a spot at the 2024 CrossFit Games.
Here are the athletes currently in Games-qualifying spots at the end of day two:
| Place | Name | Points |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr | 300 |
| 2 | Emma Lawson | 270 |
| 3 | Alexis Raptis | 249 |
| 4 | Danielle Brandon | 249 |
| 5 | Paige Semenza | 240 |
| 6 | Erica Folo | 225 |
| 7 | Caroline Stanley | 216 |
| 8 | Lydia Fish | 210 |
| 9 | Feeroozeh Saghafi | 207 |
| 10 | Haley Adams | 204 |
| 11 | Brooke Wells | 198 |
Featured Image: Carlos Fleury