CORRECTION: Open Registration Down Only 32%, Earlier Reports Inaccurate

Yesterday, the Morning Chalk Up reported that current Open registration numbers were down 44%.

This number was based on 499,000 registrants in 2018, a number that our team obtained by pulling names from CrossFit’s public leaderboard. The confusion arose in the overlap between divisions. An athlete in the 16-17 division can be counted in both the 16-17 division and the individual division. 

Additionally, our finding of 499,000 was substantiated by CNN’s February 22, 2018 story, which estimated “500,000 CrossFit athletes from all over the world” would participate in the Open. 

Our numbers, however, were wrong.

As CrossFit pointed out today, registration for the 2018 Open was 415,000, a number which is further corroborated in a story published April 16, 2018 on CrossFit’s website as well as an August 7, 2018 story published in BuzzFeed. Both stories cite the 415,000 figure. 

We did not discover either of these pieces in our preliminary research.

Based on yesterday’s registration number of 280,000, Open registration is down only 32% with a little more than three days to go before registration closes. Today, that number has likely been reduced even further as registration has seen a significant uptick in recent days, adding more than 30,000 yesterday alone. 

Morning Chalk Up’s Editor-in-Chief, Justin LoFranco, issued the following statement in response to this error:

“CrossFit Inc. deserves a full throated apology for our poor performance as journalists. Though we had the best of intentions to be accurate, we failed to do so, and failed in our responsibility. The entire CrossFit community — stakeholders and fans alike — deserves to have a publication they can rely on to be trustworthy. We’ll work hard to regain that trust.”

Morning Chalk Up will publish the final numbers after registration closes at 5:00 PM PT on Monday, February 25.