On Thursday, February 13, four-time CrossFit Games veteran and fan-favorite athlete Chandler Smith posted a powerful statement on Instagram:
- “What’s the point of having a voice if it gets stuck inside your throat? Today, I’m using my voice and following it up with action: I will not be competing in the 2025 CrossFit Games season.”
And so, after 10 years of competing in the CrossFit Open, he is choosing to sit out in 2025 and will not vie for a CrossFit Games invite.
- “I’m extremely thankful for what I’ve been given – but gratitude and blind loyalty are not the same thing,” Smith continued.
Taking a Stand
The entire community was devastated when Lazar Đukić died during the first event of the 2024 CrossFit Games.
- After that, athletes and the Professional Fitness Athletes’ Association (PFAA) demanded change from CrossFit LLC to help the athletes feel more safe.
But after nearly six months, Smith said he hasn’t seen enough change to support the Games as it currently is.
- “I don’t think the brand as it’s currently established has done enough to make me believe that it is serious about doing things differently in regards to giving athlete concerns around safety, structure, and fairness the ability to affect what happens on the floor,” Smith wrote.
With all that being said, Smith also recognized all that CrossFit has done for him, both in terms of the methodology itself and the doors it has opened.
- “CrossFit has given me…opportunities that I couldn’t have dreamed of back in 2010 when I watched Sanctionals [Regionals] online and started doing main site programming in my basement,” he wrote.
But as for this year, Smith wrote that the best way to support the athletes is “by using my absence as a vote toward challenging the CrossFit community to follow through on the methodology’s stated focus towards continuous improvement.”
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Smith concluded by saying that, this season at least, he and his wife Jessi Smith, a two-time CrossFit Games team athlete, will focus on the World Fitness Project (WFP) as well as HYROX competitions.
The Bottom Line
With each athlete’s announcement, the landscape of the 2025 CrossFit season shifts.
There’s still more than a week remaining before the submission deadline for 25.1, and a lot can happen in that time.
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Featured Image: @beauclaude / Instagram
