Big Names Win, New Names Earn Invites in Iceland
Three exciting days of fitness have come to a close in the Laugardalsholl Icelandic national arena, and the Reykjavik CrossFit Championship has crowned its champions.
Bjorgvin Karl Gudmundsson, Jacqueline Dahlstrom, and Team JST Compete stood tall amongst a field of 29 men, 24 women, and 15 teams in a competition spanning 10 scored events for individuals, and 11 for teams.
With Gudmundsson and Dahlstrom already receiving spots to the CrossFit Games through the Open, the official invites from the event will end up in the hands of fifth placed Hanna Karlsson and second placed Hinrik Ingi Oskarsson.
Team
The addition of CrossFit legend Samantha Briggs paid huge dividends for Team JST Compete, as the crew from U.K. led wire to wire en route to earning themselves the coveted team invite from Iceland.
[sponsor_ad]
Briggs made an impact immediately in the first event, finishing with the fastest individual time of any team athlete in the run up Mount Esja and second fastest time of the day including against the men. The team would win the event and a lead they would never relinquish. Over the course of the next six events they managed to hold the Invictus Boston team and carry an 18 point lead going into the final day.
Each team traded event wins – with the other finishing in second – to keep the points gap steady with only the four part finale remaining. Each team member would have their own 50 point workout to complete and once again Briggs showed her value.
The 2013 Fittest Woman on Earth took on the first of four legs, winning just ahead of Invictus’ Craig Kenney and adding to the JST lead. Team captain and 2015 Games individual qualifier Steven Fawcett followed suit winning his portion as well and effectively shutting the door on Invictus’ hopes of a comeback.
JST now sends a team to the Games for the second time in three seasons after the crew from Wigan, England finished 15th at the 2017 Reebok CrossFit Games. Briggs also has the distinction of being the only athlete to finish in the top 20 in the Open, win their national championship, and earn an invite to the Games on a team.
- Team JST Compete
- Invictus Boston
- Superheroproject
Men
In perhaps the most fitting result of the weekend, Iceland’s favored son Bjorgvin Karl Gudmundsson ran away with a men’s competition that included eight other current and former Games athletes.
Gudmundsson won four events across the weekend, including the opening run up Mount Esja, and finale to bookend a competition where he never finished an event lower than ninth. By the time the dust settled, BKG finished 92 points ahead of fellow countryman Hinrik Ingi Oskarsson.
Oskarsson, however, will receive the invite due to Gudmundsson qualifying as Iceland’s national champion. Oskarsson managed to hold off Games veterans Will Moorad and Paul Tremblay on the final day. Moorad and Tremblay exchanged event wins to start the day, and going into the finale Oskarsson was just two points clear of Moorad, and twenty points clear of Tremblay.
Oskarsson rose to the occasion in final event – a repeat of the 2009 Games final chipper – pulling ahead of both challengers early, and holding off Moorad’s late push to make history as the first individual athlete ever to make the CrossFit Games after serving a two-year drug sanction.
- Bjorgvin Karl Gudmundsson
- Hinrik Ingi Oskarsson
- Will Moorad
Women
A topsy-turvy women’s competition saw a new leader at the end of each day of competition, and women from three different countries finish on the podium.
Early on Iceland’s Thuri Helgadottir sat atop the leaderboard after day one, but rising star Haley Adams opened day two with three straight top three finishes and an impressive win on the heavy sandbag in event 4a to seize the overall lead going into the final day.
Norway’s Jacqueline Dahlstrom would have the last laugh, opening the final day with an event win, and beating Adams in the two subsequent workouts to get the win ahead of Adams in second. Dahlstrom and Adams, along with third place Anna Fragkou, and fourth place Helgadottir all previously secured spots to the Games so Sweden’s Hanna Karlsson will receive the invite and join her boyfriend Simon Mantyla – who finished 20th in the Open this year – at the Games in August.
Karlsson, who didn’t even do the Open this year, battled a nagging hip and knee injury all weekend to finish the weekend in fifth overall, and will join Camilla Salomonsson Hellman to represent Sweden at the 2019 CrossFit Games.
- Jacqueline Dahlstrom
- Haley Adams
- Anna Fragkou