The dust is finally beginning to settle after an action packed 2019 CrossFit Open. The 2019 CrossFit Open served as the main qualifying event for the CrossFit Games. For this year’s Games, the top 20 athletes worldwide receive invites to the Games, along with athletes who are dubbed national champions for their country.
Currently, CrossFit HQ is in the verification process of scores and videos for the top Open athletes. Additionally, they are also verifying citizenship of athletes who sit at the top of their country’s leaderboard by requesting passports or proof of citizenship documentation. This process is going to take a few weeks, so the leaders below and finalization of the leaderboard is still unofficial.
Important CrossFit Open Leaderboard Changes to Note
Before moving forward, it’s important to keep a few leaderboard notes in mind. First, national championship wins take precedence over worldwide leaderboard finishes. This means that if an athlete won their country and placed in the top 20, then they would qualify for the Games with their national championship and the worldwide leaderboard would shift down accordingly.
Second, there are currently 123 national champions for the men and 117 national champions for the women. Note, this is not to say every athlete will be in attendance at the Games, as citizen verification, score finalization, and travel commitments have all not been finalized.
As of right now, eight men on the top 20 worldwide leaderboard are also national champions, which means the worldwide leaderboard has shifted to the 28th place worldwide Open finisher. For the women, 11 national champions finished in the top 20, so their leaderboard has shifted to the 31st spot. Yes, that is what the blue line indicates on the leaderboard — if you’ve been wondering!
Third, shifts can still very well occur as CrossFit HQ finalizes their video verifications and apply penalty points to athlete’s scores.
Tentative Open Worldwide Leaders
As a reminder, the leaderboards below are not final and we could very well still see shifts of placement. In respects to the overall top placing athletes for the Open, Mat Fraser and Sara Sigmundsdottir absolutely dominated the worldwide leaderboard. Note, both athletes also won their country, which means their spot will be backfilled on the worldwide leaderboard.
Check out the current worldwide Open qualifying athletes for the men and women below. *We have bolded worldwide leaders who have also qualified as national champions.*
Women’s Worldwide Leaderboard
| 1 | Sara Sigmundsdottir — Iceland | 43 |
| 2 | Annie Thorisdottir — Iceland | 75 |
| 3 | Kristin Holte — Norway | 96 |
| 4 | Jamie Greene — New Zealand | 98 |
| 5 | Dani Speegle — United States | 100 |
| 6 | Brooke Wells — United States | 119 |
| 6 | Tia-Clair Toomey — Australia | 119 |
| 6 | Amanda Barnhart — United States | 119 |
| 9 | Kari Pearce — United States | 120 |
| 10 | Carol-Ann Reason-Thibault — Canada | 167 |
| 11 | Mekenzie Riley — United States | 198 |
| 12 | Karin Froyova — Slovakia | 200 |
| 13 | Kristine Best — United States | 202 |
| 14 | Katrin Davidsdottir — Iceland | 229 |
| 15 | Carolyne Prevost — Canada | 257 |
| 16 | Emma McQuaid — Ireland | 264 |
| 17 | Danielle Brandon — United States | 271 |
| 18 | Mckenzie Flinchum — United States | 306 |
| 19 | Jadzie Truszkowski — Canada | 326 |
| 20 | Brooke Haas — United States | 352 |
| 21 | Anna Fragkou — Greece | 377 |
| 22 | Alexis Johnson — United States | 400 |
| 23 | Samantha Briggs — UK | 411 |
| 24 | Alessandra Pichelli — Italy | 461 |
| 25 | Jacqueline Dahlstrom — Norway | 470 |
| 26 | Chantelle Loehner — United States | 502 |
| 27 | Hayley Murillo — United States | 510 |
| 28 | Feeroozeh Saghai — United States | 519 |
| 29 | Tasia Percevecz — United States | 548 |
| 30 | Melissa Doll — United States | 551 |
| 31 | Kristi Eramo — United States | 580 |
Men’s Worldwide Leaderboard
| 1 | Mat Fraser — United States | 66 |
| 2 | Lefteris Theofanidis — Greece | 75 |
| 3 | Bjorgvin Karl Gudmundsson — Iceland | 95 |
| 4 | Jacob Heppner — United States | 169 |
| 5 | Jean-Simon Roy-Lemaire — Canada | 188 |
| 6 | Cole Sager — United States | 226 |
| 7 | Uldis Upenieks — Latvia | 252 |
| 8 | George Sterner — United States | 292 |
| 9 | Samuel Cournoyer — Canada | 304 |
| 10 | Rich Froning — United States | 335 |
| 11 | Scott Panchik — United States | 337 |
| 12 | Jason Carroll — United States | 356 |
| 13 | Zachery Buntin — United States | 364 |
| 14 | Streat Hoerner — United States | 367 |
| 15 | Devin Ford — United States | 369 |
| 16 | Travis Mayer — United States | 370 |
| 17 | Richard Castillo — United States | 378 |
| 18 | Frederik Aegidius — Denmark | 380 |
| 18 | Bayden Brown — Australia | 380 |
| 20 | Simon Mantyla — Sweden | 417 |
| 20 | Samuel Kwant — United States | 417 |
| 22 | Lukas Hogberg — Sweden | 421 |
| 22 | Logcan Collins — United States | 421 |
| 24 | Eric Carmody — United States | 438 |
| 25 | Casper Gammelmark — Denmark | 457 |
| 26 | Alex Vigneault — Canada | 463 |
| 27 | Jeffrey Adler — Canada | 466 |
| 28 | Dean Linder-Leighton — Australia | 472 |
What’s also going to be interesting as the season progresses is watching how Sanctional events cause numbers to shift. CrossFit Open national champions and worldwide leaders both take precedent over Sanctional invites.
In layman’s terms, if an athlete won or wins a Sanctional event, but also placed in the top 20 or is a national champion, then their Sanctional invite would be backfilled accordingly. As you can imagine, handfuls of athletes who place highly at Sanctional events have also placed highly in the Open, so the spots are being backfilled pretty deep into Sanctional event’s leaderboards.
There are still 10 Sanctional events set to take place over the next three months. Check out the full CrossFit Sanctional Schedule.
Differences In National Champion Scores
As you can imagine, there is a lot of variance between the scores of national champions. There are 123 men who have qualified as national champions and 117 women. This means there is a large spread between the top five placing athletes for the men and women and the bottom five.
This might seem alarming to many, but this is somewhat normal when a large worldwide sport changes their rules and qualification criteria for countries participating. We see this often at the World Games and Olympics with athletes who have large spreads between their scores (1st and last are typically very different). It’s normal when you have countries with larger talent pools going against developing countries with minimal athlete participation.
To account for this large variation, CrossFit HQ has alluded to the athlete field being narrowed down drastically upon conclusion of the first day at the 2019 CrossFit Games.
Instead of highlighting every score, we’ve included the top five placing national scores and the bottom five to highlight the vast differences between the scores. Hopefully as years go on we continue to see more countries become competitive and grow their athlete talent pool!
Top 5 National Champion Scores (Men & Women)
| 1 | Mat Fraser — United States | 66 | 1 | Sara Sigmundsdottir — Iceland | 43 |
| 2 | Lefteris Theofanidis — Greece | 75 | 3 | Kristin Holte — Norway | 96 |
| 3 | Bjorgvin Karl Gudmundsson — Iceland | 95 | 4 | Jamie Greene – New Zealand | 98 |
| 5 | Jean-Simon Roy-Lemaire — Canada | 188 | 5 | Dani Speegle — United States | 100 |
| 7 | Uldis Upenieks — Latvia | 252 | 6 | Tia-Clair Toomey — Australia | 119 |
https://www.instagram.com/p/BvcjHGDBbGA/
Bottom 5 National Champion Scores (Men & Women)
| 35356 | Eden Ahiaku – Ghana | 220810 | 36641 | Chanelle Munroe — Bahamas | 213134 |
| 42590 | Andre Alipate — Tonga | 256049 | 41925 | Nadia Ouyahia — Algeria | 238468 |
| 65923 | Pack Santos — Mozambique | 360796 | 46844 | Sreymao Po — Cambodia | 261716 |
| 69432 | James Desimone — Djibouti | 375741 | 65114 | Bayana Duysekova — Uzbekistan | 339783 |
| 89056 | Waleed Al Maskari — Tanzania |
455810 |
66995 | Zaida Amade — Mozambique | 347445 |
As a Friendly Reminder
The above scoreboards are still unofficial and could be subject to change. The final deadline for video submission for top athletes is on April 1st, and we’re guessing the scores will be finalized at some point within April. It’s going to be interesting to watch the season progress and to see how many athletes choose to participate at the 2019 CrossFit Games.
Feature image from @mathewfras and @sarasigmunds Instagram page.
