Interview: Katelin Van Zyl Explains How Tech Issues Almost Cost Her a CrossFit Semifinals Spot
Heading into the 2024 Quarterfinals, Australia’s Katelin van Zyl was relaxed and ready to rumble.
A mother to two young boys, van Zyl had arranged for her mom to be in town to care for the kids all weekend so she could focus on her fitness and qualifying for Semifinals. Van Zyl felt like things were lining up well and had a great attitude going into the weekend.
- “I wasn’t feeling too stressed about Quarterfinals. I had my hernia surgery three months ago, early enough so that I could be ready for the season,” she tells the Morning Chalk Up.
[Related: Is CrossFit’s Video Review Working? Questions Surround an Uncertain Process]
A Rocky Return
Three months after surgery, van Zyl finally regained the confidence to lift heavy again without pain; her main goal was to finish in the top 40 in her region and advance to the Semifinals.
Winning was not on her mind, which aided in her stress-free approach to the week. She completed the four workouts in the order that worked best for her, prioritizing the first two because of their earlier due date.
- “I went to submit my scores for the first two workouts on the app, and it kept kicking me out,” she says. “After several times logging on and getting booted, I eventually got to the stage where I could see both scores and both video links there and uploaded. I took a screenshot, which I always do, just for clarification.”
Done and dusted, van Zyl went on with her day. Then things took a turn.
- “The first thing that happened was a girl from the gym asking me what was happening with the leaderboard and if I had checked it,” van Zyl says. “I pulled it up immediately on my phone and saw that my score for Workout 2 had been given a zero.”
She then saw an email from CrossFit HQ saying her score had been invalidated.
Her heart dropped.
Van Zyl replied immediately, inquiring about what could have caused her score to be wiped out.
- “They responded and said that my video link wasn’t there upon submission, or it didn’t open — whatever the case was, they could not view my video,” she says. “I responded by sending them the screenshot of my video link with a timestamp, showing that I did it during the correct time window, and there should be no problems.”
[Related: Interview: Andrea Nisler Talks About Qualifying for Semifinals 6 Weeks After Giving Birth]
Glitch in the System
The crux of the issue was that CrossFit HQ claimed to have sent van Zyl an email notifying her of the missing video (on their end) and requesting her to submit a video within 24 hours.
Van Zyl never received it. She says she and her husband checked everywhere, including her spam folder, but she did not have an email request.
CrossFit and van Zyl continued exchanging emails over the next several days as the significant time zone difference between Australia and the United States exacerbated the stress.
- “When I submitted my score and video, it showed the upload as successful on my end, but then I don’t know what happened,” van Zyl says. “Once it got to their end, when I went to view my dashboard and submission history, I saw that there was no video link for Workout 2.”
Desperate to prove her case, van Zyl pressed HQ, asking them to physically type the URL from her screenshot into the Google search bar.
Success.
Her Workout 2 was there, plain as day, all 17 minutes and 37 seconds of it. (It’s worth noting that the exact root cause of the tech issues remains unclear.)
The Aftermath
It took seven days for van Zyl’s scores to finally go through — and it wasn’t easy for her to watch the process unfold.
- “It has been stressful; I’ve missed a week of training. I sacrifice so much with my kids and family for something like this to happen; it’s tough,” van Zyl says. “And really to happen potentially to the whole season, a whole year of training, getting my hernia surgery done so that I could be ready for this year — so much rides on it. All because of something that doesn’t have to do with my physical ability, but technology.”
Van Zyl knows things have to change, but she is unsure what needs to happen so fewer people have to go through the stress she did.
- “Maybe there could be a central CrossFit site to which we upload our videos directly so we don’t have to worry about uploading to other apps or websites,” she says. “I don’t know what a solution would be. I think we need more in-person competitions than those online – we need to minimize the online stuff as much as possible to avoid this from happening.”
[Related: Was the 2024 CrossFit Quarterfinals Missing a Strength Test?]
After a horrible week, van Zyl is thankful for her mental toughness and ability to persevere.
- “I’ve been working with a sports psychologist for a while, which has helped me a lot,” she says. “I worked with her through this, and she has helped me not focus on what I can’t change. I’ve done my best, and I can’t change the outcome that’s going to happen. I need to try to breeze through the tough times and not focus on the bad things.”
Once the dust settled and the scores were finalized, van Zyl finished third in Oceania and officially has a spot ready for her at Semifinals. Whatever comes next, she’ll be ready for it.
“It comes down to the perspective and how you look at things,” she says. “I am trying to adopt different perspectives and be more positive and focus and trust that I am bloody good enough. And you know, I will always do my best.”
Featured image: @bbold_movement / Instagram