New and Redo Events at the Brazil CrossFit Championship

The Brazil CrossFit Championship kicks off its second year as a Sanctional on Friday, March 6 with two individual and one team 2020 CrossFit Games invitation on the line. What awaits the competitors in São Paulo in year two are events that are unique and will push their level of fitness.

Event Trailblazers: Last year the Brazil CrossFit Championship (BCC) made headlines with its final event, a single-elimination couplet that gathered the top-eight competitors in the individual divisions. What transpired was one of the more exciting events of the season.

• The workout: 20 calorie Assault Bike, 12m double overhead kettlebell walking lunge (24kg/16kg).
• The last athlete to cross the finish line was eliminated from the event.
• This repeated every three minutes until only one athlete remained on the floor.
• The elimination workout was the first of its kind at an official CrossFit event. This year Wodapalooza recreated a version of the event replacing the kettlebells with a barbell and opting for rounds instead of the last-athlete standing model.

What’s in store for year two: The BCC hasn’t disappointed this year in terms of new and innovative workouts. Programmed once again by Jobst Olschewski of Cape CrossFit, this year’s workouts will not only challenge the athletes but also provide the spectators a great show. Here’s a look at three events:

A new implement: Teams get a taste of the BCC programming right off the bat in the form of an implement that has never appeared at any official CrossFit event, the rugby scrum machine.

• The scrum machine, also called the scrummaging machine, is a padded, weighted device that rugby players can practice scrummaging, simulating a scrum in competition. Scrummaging, is the method that rugby uses to restart play during a match. Opposing players face each other with their heads down pushing against each other as they attempt to gain possession of the ball.
• The event standards are simple enough, teams will push the Scrum 100m down a field and back.
• There will be two rounds of the workout. The first round will be for seeding and the second round will put teams that have similar times after the seeding round into competition against each other.
• The times from the two rounds will then be combined for the final score of the event.
• The scrum machine is very similar to the sleds that American football players use, particularly offensive and defensive linemen in practice.
• The total weight for the scrum has not been released yet. The scrum without the added weight is 250kg/551 pounds.
• One of the biggest challenges for the teams with the scrum machine will be the steering. Teams will need to keep their machine in their lanes.
• At the 2012 Games, an individual football sled was coupled with a rope climb during event nine.
• The “Big Bob”, which has appeared in numerous Games events for teams, is also similar to the scrum machine. The major difference being all team members are aligned together side-by-side where the “Big Bob” has two spots in front and two in the back for athletes.

A second chance: During the 2018 Latin America Regional in Brazil there was an issue when it came to the athletes performing individual event six. Due to a strike, the ropes that were needed for the workout were not delivered. This led to organizers having to reprogram the event and substitute pull-ups in place of the originally programmed rope climbs.

• Named “Rio 18.6 Reloaded” in honor of the workout that never happened, the BCC gives many athletes who were at the Regionals in 2018 another chance to do the workout as originally intended.
• The workout is for time with a 7:00 minute cap:
  4 rope climbs/16 thrusters
  3 rope climbs/12 thrusters
  2 rope climbs/8 thrusters
• The thruster weight is 70kg/155 pounds for men and 50kg/110 pounds for females.
• Agustin Richelme, Lucas Almeida, Guilherme Domingues, Anderon Primo, Ivan Gaitan, and Omar Martinez are all athletes in the BCC field who competed at the 2018 Latin America Regional. Richelme had the best finish of the group, placing 11th in the modified event.
• For the women, Andreia Pinheiro, Anita Pravatti, Antonelli Nicole, Cecilia Ramirez Villamil, Luiza Dias, Melina Rodriguez, Nathalia Mencari, Sasha Nievas and Thatianne Lima Freitas get another crack at 18.6 after doing the modified version in 2018. Pinheiro had the best finish of the returning group with a fourth place finish in the event.
• Paul Castillo has the best recorded time for 18.6 in the field with a time of 3:57 which ranks 20th overall. Marquan Jones finished in 4:16 at the 2018 East Regional. Rasmus Andersen also finished in 4:16 at the 2018 Meridian Regional.

Death by: The BCC wanted to bring back the excitement that was featured in its final event from 2019. Event four named “Death by Meteoro” will offer that “last athlete standing” workout.

• Just like all “death by” workouts, this starts off simple enough and gets harder the longer you stay “in the game” as athletes race against the clock to complete each round.
• Athletes will have 90 seconds to row for calories (20 cals for men/16 cals for women). Then they must do two sandbag cleans (meteoro), advance the sandbag, followed by a sprint to the finish line.
• Each round they successfully complete, two cleans will be added. This will be done for a total of six rounds, ending with 12 sandbag cleans.
• If an athlete fails to complete the work under the 90 second time cap they are eliminated from the event.

For a complete list of events, event descriptions and schedule go to the BCC website or their official Instagram. The Morning Chalk Up will be providing analysis and recaps each day for the Sanctional. Check out the Brazil CrossFit Championship Sanctional page for coverage.