Team Ice Barrel Jumps from Seventh to Podium Contention Sunday Morning in Miami

On paper, the strongest women’s team at the 2024 TYR Wodapalooza looked like it would be the star-studded team of individual CrossFit Games veterans: Paige Powers, Baylee Rayl and eight-time Games competitor Brooke Wells.

After Day 1, though, Team Ice Barrel found themselves in seventh overall behind multiple teams with lesser known, yet more experienced team competitors.

But Team Ice Barrel, who opened the competition with 14th and 10th place finishes in the first two events on Saturday, didn’t let their slow start derail them. They showed up on Sunday morning looking like the veterans that they are, which helped them to a fourth-place finish on “The Sandbag Send” and an event win on “Waterfall on the Bay.”

• “I think we all have enough experience of not having a good day. So it didn’t really phase us,” said Wells on Sunday about how she and her team regrouped after Saturday.

These two finishes vaulted Team Ice Barrel from seventh to fourth, and just 11 points out of third, with one final event left, an event that includes worm thrusters, as well as some classic CrossFit pulling movements: pull-ups, chest-to-bar pull-ups, and bar muscle-ups.

One big thing: The other two teams we predicted to contend for the top spot in Miami also had slower starts on Saturday, a day that began with a 5k run followed by a swim event.

• Team Scandinadian (a team with two individual Games athletes, Matilde Garnes and Rebecka Vitesson, and-up-and-coming Canadian Anikha Greer) sat in fourth after Day 1, while Stronger Than a 90s Trend (a team with veteran CrossFit Games team athletes Kelsey Kiel, Emelie Lundberg and Kelly Baker) sat in third behind two unexpected teams—RX Performance and Lycan Gang.
• And after Sunday’s first two events, like Team Ice Barrel, both Team Scandinadian and Stronger Than a 90s Crew have inched closer to the top spot, with Team Scandinadian sitting in third overall, and Stronger Than a 90s Trend in second, 20 points behind the leaders, RX Performance (Camilla Salomonsson Hellman, Antonia Fält-Kottulinsky and Maria Längfors).

The bottom line: With one event to go in Miami, the three teams we expected to be fighting for the podium at the start of the competition are doing just that, something that didn’t necessarily look that likely for Team Ice Barrel after yesterday. That being said, Wells insists her team’s main goal is just “just to have fun.”

Then again, nothing could be more fun than making a huge comeback on the leaderboard and finishing on the podium.