The Adaptive CrossFit Games Prize Purse Is Smaller for the 2024 Season — Here’s Why It Matters
Just before the Individual and Team Semifinals kicked off in May, CrossFit Games announced the total prize purse for the 2024 season.
The press release read:
- “There will be a prize purse of more than $3.3 million (USD) across the Individual, Team, Adaptive, and Masters divisions spanning the Semifinals and CrossFit Games championships.”
The release continued: “All 40 men and 40 women in the Individual division at the CrossFit Games, as well as the top 10 team finishers, Adaptive division podium finishers, and Masters division podium finishers, will receive a portion of the $3.3 million-plus prize purse.”
No additional details were provided, but last week, the 2024 CrossFit Games rulebook was updated to reflect detailed prize payouts for the Games, the Masters Games by Legends, and the Adaptive Games by WheelWOD.
One big thing: While the individual prize payouts for athletes in most divisions stayed the same year-over-year, as first reported by Barbell Spin, the podium finishers at the Adaptive Games by WheelWOD will earn less.
At first glance, this seems like a negative outcome of all the changes to the Adaptive Games season in 2024, but it turns out that the ceiling for the sport’s growth just got a lot higher, thanks to the work of WheelWOD Head of Games and Sport, Kevin Ogar.
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Behind the 2024 Adaptive CrossFit Games Prize Purse
In 2023, the Adaptive podium cash prizes, across eight divisions, totaled $160,000 and were broken down as follows:
- First Place: $5,000
- Second Place: $3,000
- Third Place: $2,000
According to the rulebook update last week, the 2024 Adaptive podium cash prizes, across 15 divisions, will total only $105,000 and will be broken down as follows:
- First Place: $2,000
- Second Place: $1,000
- Third Place: $500
A $55,000 reduction.
Before we dig deeper, let’s look at how we got here.
A Year of Change
Last October, the CrossFit Games team announced the creation of three “Divisional Games,” to be held separate from the Games in Fort Worth.
- The Masters CrossFit Games by Legends
- The Teen CrossFit Games by Pit Teen Throwdown
- The Adaptive CrossFit Games by WheelWOD.
Each of these Divisional Games has a slightly different season and setup.
- Both the Masters and Teen CrossFit Games utilized the same Open > Quarterfinals > Age Group Semifinals (in their case online) by the CrossFit Games team to qualify for their championship events, to be held this year on Labor Day Weekend (in Birmingham, AL, for Masters, Kalamazoo, MI, for Teens).
- The Adaptive CrossFit Games by WheelWOD has a separate track with its own Open and an online Semifinal before its Games, to be held in San Antonio, TX, September 19-22.
At the CrossFit Games in Madison last August, only three of the eight divisions competed in front of the crowds:
- Upper Extremity
- Lower Extremity
- Multi-Extremity
The Adaptive Divisions that competed in person at the Games had 30 athletes and five spots for each division.
The other five divisions, below, were crowned the Fittest from the 2023 CrossFit Open.
- Vision
- Short Stature
- Seated With Hip Function
- Seated Without Hip Function
- Intellectual
Adaptive CrossFit Games, by the Numbers
In total, during the 2023 season, 680 men and 446 women competed in the Adaptive Divisions.
- Ten athletes were crowned Fittest after the initial three-week Open (five men and five women).
- Six more were crowned in Madison (three men and three women).
Back to the 2024 Season: In the announcement for the Adaptive Athlete Divisional Games, Kevin Ogar, the two-time Fittest Man in the Seated, Without Hip Function Division at the CrossFit Games and WheelWOD co-owner, was named Event Director for the Adaptive CrossFit Games this year.
- In an interview with the Morning Chalk Up, Ogar said that the CrossFit Games requested his and WheelWOD’s guidance last season and proposed the partnership well before the changes announced last fall.
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The positive trends of this partnership are already showing.
- The 2024 WheelWOD Open had 865 total participants, about 250 fewer athletes at this stage of the season than in 2023.
- It’s important to note, though, that this is the first year on a new platform and qualifying process. Some growing pains here make sense.
One hundred athletes competed in the Adaptive Semifinal the last year that CrossFit hosted it in 2022.
In 2024, 474 athletes competed in the Adaptive Semifinal hosted by WheelWOD.
All of this leads to growth — more athletes from more divisions competing live in person at the Adaptive CrossFit Games by WheelWOD.
This year features 15 adaptive divisions:
- Upper Impairment, 1 Point of Contact
- Upper Impairment, 2 Points of Contact
- Lower Impairment, Above Knee
- Lower Impairment, Below Knee
- Lower Impairment, Minor
- Seated, Without Hip Function
- Seated, With Hip Function
- Seated, Quadriplegic
- Neuromuscular, Major
- Neuromuscular, Moderate
- Neuromuscular, Minor
- Standing Diagnosed
- Visual Impairment
- Short Stature
- Intellectual
Based on the qualifiers for each division, the goal is for 281 total athletes to compete in San Antonio this September.
Ogar’s Efforts
While Ogar and WheelWOD were happy to take the reins, he is the first to say the support they have received from the CrossFit Games team has been better than ever.
- “The WheelWOD team and the CrossFit Games team have worked through all aspects of the season together,” Ogar told Morning Chalk Up.
From how to score a possible event to reviewing possible workouts for floor plan ideas to on-site surveys for locations, CrossFit HQ has its full weight and support behind WheelWOD to take the Adaptive Games to a new level.
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So why is there a reduction in prize money if the leadership and momentum are all there?
We reached out to CrossFit and received the following statement from Dave Castro, General Manager of Sport and Education at CrossFit, printed in full:
“As we looked at the overall Adaptive Division and considered feedback from competing athletes, our main priorities entering this season in partnership with WheelWOD were three-fold: 1) to invest in an increased number of divisions, 2) to allow for more qualifying athletes, and 3) to cover the costs associated with a greater number of divisions and qualifying athletes.
We are committed to providing our Adaptive athletes with the same experience as other divisions, and we determined that the way to provide the highest quality event this year was to reallocate some of the prize money while keeping the purse as high as possible.
Kevin Ogar and WheelWOD have taken on a massive lift in order to ensure that the new divisions—in addition to those already existing—are competing in person this year. In our opinion, awarding prize money to more athletes across the board is a positive, even if the top prize is a little less than it has been in the past.”
The Bottom Line
At first glance, the drop in prize money for the Adaptive CrossFit Games at WheelWOD may seem like a step backward. However, the guidance from Ogar and CrossFit HQ opens up a potential for growth that was not readily apparent when only three divisions of eight completed their season with an in-person championship event in 2023.
Featured image: @kevinogar / Instagram