By many accounts, Sara Sigmundsdóttir underperformed at Stage One of the 2020 Reebok CrossFit Games. The 2020 Open winner — her third Open win in the last four years — and two-time CrossFit Games podium finisher had high expectations at the fully remote Stage One of the CrossFit Games.
However, rather than being in contention for the top five athletes to advance to the finals, Sigmundsdóttir found herself finishing in the bottom half of the field in five out of seven events.
At that time, an undisclosed factor was influencing her performance. The 27-year-old took to her Instagram page to share with her followers and the CrossFit community at-large that she suffered a shin injury prior to the 2020 Rogue Invitational after a “clumsy box jump.”
Sigmundsdóttir shared the story of her injury, the multiple emergency room visits, and the unfortunate infection that followed across three separate posts.
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According to part two, she did not give the injury a sufficient amount of time to properly heal prior to competing at the Rogue Invitational, where she placed second overall. Two months after that event, when “the wound had totally closed,” it became infected, which led to some aggressive swelling. You can see part two of her post below, but be forewarned that the images of her injury are graphic:
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[Related: Sara Sigmundsdottir, Justin Medeiros, And Team ROMWOD Win CrossFit Filthy 150]
“…within hours it looked like I had a second knee on my left leg. Again I had to rush to the emergency room, this time for a minimal surgery which was followed by a cycle of strong antibiotics.”
It wasn’t until after she was cleared to train again that her nutritionist clued her into the possibility that she may have acquired a “cortisol issue as a result of the infection.” The symptoms she was experiencing matched the description for adrenal insufficiency.
On October 5th, approximately two weeks after Stage One of the Games, she received the results of a cortisol test she did to determine if she was, in fact, suffering from an adrenal insufficiency:
I finally received a firm diagnosis confirming that my cortisol levels were way too low.
With Sigmundsdóttir now in her off-season, she expressed that she will take the requisite time to “fully recover and calculate [her] next moves.”
For context, here were Sigmundsdóttir’s results for each event in Stage One:
- Friendly Fran — 27th
- One Rep Max Front Squat — 18th
- Damn Diane — 21st
- 1,000 Meter Row — 11th
- Nasty Nancy — 16th
- Handstand Hold — 24th
- Awful Annie — 5th
Her final overall rank was 21st place (281 points) out of 30 competitors.
The CrossFit Games Finals
The live in-person finals of the 2020 CrossFit Games are set to begin on October 19th at the CrossFit Ranch in Aromas, California. Here are the ten athletes who advanced as the top five from Stage One:
Men:
- Mathew Fraser
- Noah Ohlsen
- Justin Medeiros
- Samuel Kwant
- Jeffrey Adler
Women:
Athletes in both divisions will compete for a first place purse of $300,000 and the title of Fittest on Earth.
Feature image from Sara Sigmundsdóttir’s Instagram page: @sarasigmunds
