“Staying the Course”: Dave Castro Comments on the Recent CrossFit Quarterfinals Penalties
Dave Castro, general manager of sport at CrossFit HQ, said the review process for workout video submissions is being looked at but won’t change for the remainder of the 2024 CrossFit Games season.
This came during Castro’s weekly Week in Review podcast, where he addressed the relatively high volume of penalties given during the video review process of the Individual Quarterfinals workouts.
[Related: Interview: Andrea Nisler Talks About Qualifying for Semifinals 6 Weeks After Giving Birth]
Remind me: Individual athletes in the Quarterfinals stage submitted videos for four separate workouts during two different submission windows. CrossFit’s workout descriptions suggested camera angles, standards for each movement, and a detailed flow of how each workout should be performed.
Following the submission windows, CrossFit HQ reviewed the videos and handed out major and minor penalties to athletes for Workout 1 (as well as a lesser number for the other workouts).
As of Sunday, April 28, CrossFit had administered 599 total penalties, according to reporting from Morning Chalk Up’s Nicky Freymond. This has led to major upsets on the leaderboard, particularly hitting previous Semifinals and Games athletes hard.
What he’s saying: Castro’s Week in Review video podcast on YouTube typically involves a recap of what’s going on in the CrossFit world and a segment where he answers questions from viewers.
He opened the show this week by focusing mostly on the penalty issue and giving listeners some background on how CrossFit HQ plans to move forward.
- “I don’t like to see these athletes who work so hard not be able to advance onto the next stage for this, but it is the rules; it is the system put in place,” Castro said in his video post.
- He mentioned that HQ had close to 1,000 reviews, of which around 180 were minor penalties, and roughly 160 were major penalties.
- These, among other figures, are “pretty similar and/or consistent to years past when we use this model at the Quarterfinal stage to assess those going forward and to assess and implement penalties,” he added.
[Related: Was the 2024 CrossFit Quarterfinals Missing a Strength Test?]
Castro said there are no current plans to change direction or modify any penalties given to the athletes. And the online competition aspect of the road leading up to the CrossFit Games doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, either.
So what’s next? Athletes can expect to see some changes for the next season and seasons to come.
- “Staying the course and not making any midstream changes [this year] is the appropriate path forward,” Castro said. “Big picture, is this the right way to do this next year or in future years? I believe no.”
Ideas, such as encouraging the placement of a third-party (outside of a local affiliate or training camp) judge and enforced camera angles, are among some of the requirements Castro suggested. No decisions have been made, but the community can expect changes in the future.
The bottom line: Castro repeatedly shared how sorry he was for those athletes who received those penalties and now won’t advance to Semifinals. But “at the end of the day, we had these rules and a system put in place.”
The lesson to learn here is “we definitely need to review the system and how we are going forward, but at this time, I don’t think we need to throw a grenade into how we did it this year because it was understood going into this year this was the system we were going to use,” Castro said.
Featured image: @CrossFitGames / Instagram