This is it, the last Regional weekend of the season, and our last chance to play our little Regionals speculation game. If you’ve been following along, you may have noticed that some of us are much better at this game than others.
Looking at the seedings for this weekend, it’s hard not to say that they’ve saved the best for last. The Top 10 East Women have the second best Open rankings of any Regional — behind only the the Top 10 East Men. Equally competitive is the Meridian, overflowing with ‘Dóttirs (minus Katrin, who is competing in the East), and welcoming back Sam Briggs and her biceps to the Region.
With the exception of Events 4 and 5, all other Event Records were set on Regionals Weekend 1 by either Alethea Boon or Kara Webb. Taking into account the depth of the women’s field competing this weekend, I wouldn’t be surprised if most, if not all, of these records fell.
For the last time this season, here are this week’s picks, in alphabetical order. At the end of the article, special guest expert James Hobart also gives his picks for top female finishers at the upcoming 2016 CrossFit Games:
Picks from Jay Adams
(Jay broke the rules, and picked 5 from East and 5 from Meridian)
East
Katrin Tanja Davidsdóttir
Michele Letendre
Kari Pearce
Tasia Percevecz
Carol-Ann Reason-Thiebault
Meridian
Sam Briggs
Kristin Holte
Mikaela Norman
Sara Sigmundsdóttir
Annie Thorisdóttir
Picks from Liz Adams
Liz Adams
Sam Briggs
Katrin Tanja Davidsdóttir
Sara Sigmundsdóttir
Annie Thorisdóttir
Brooke Wells
Picks from Ian Berger
Kari Pearce
Sara Sigmundsdóttir
Annie Thorisdóttir
Stacie Tovar
Brooke Wells
Keka Schermerhorn
Sam Briggs
The ‘Dóttirs (including Thuridur)
Kari Pearce
Tasia Percevecz
Stacie Tovar
Brooke Wells/Dani Horan (bonus pick)
Brooke Siem
Samantha Briggs
Annie Thorisdóttir
Sara Sigmundsdóttir
Katrin Tanja Davidsdóttir
Brooke Wells
David Tao
Samantha Briggs
Katrin Tanja Davidsdóttir
Kari Pearce
Tasia Percevecz
Jennifer Smith
And while we over here are still trying to pick The Top Five Women for this Regional Weekend, James “The Baby Faced Killer” Hobart (aka Rich Froning’s CrossFit Mayhem Freedom teammate and a multi-time individual Games competitor) has already picked his Top Five Women in Carson. Here are his picks, in alphabetical order.
James Hobart Picks the Top Women at the 2016 CrossFit Games
Emily Bridgers
Margaux Alvarez/Chyna Cho (not great starts but they finished day 3 aggressively, that’s a good intangible come Games time)
Katrin Davidsdottir (can’t count out a champ)
Camille Leblanc-Bazinet
Kara Webb
Our experts’ most popular athletes from last weekend, Emily Bridgers, and Emily Abbott, performed as predicted, but it was Carleen Mathews — an athlete that only Becca Voigt and I picked as our Top Five — who won the West Regional.
What do you think of this week’s picks? Should we expect any surprises this weekend? Leave your thoughts below.