The Open is Over, Now What?

The last five weeks have gone by in a flash and the 10th CrossFit Open has now officially closed. Before we dive into the larger ramifications for the CrossFit Games season, here are a few fun facts worth mentioning:

• There are now only two movements that have been programmed in their original form every single year: toes-to-bar and double-unders. Thrusters have been programmed in every Open but once with dumbbells (20.2). Muscle-ups have also been in every Open but they’ve switched between bar muscle-ups and ring muscle-ups.
• There have been a number of firsts introduced this season: first time thrusters were not programmed in the final workout and the first time they were with dumbbells; first time pistols were programmed; the first time athletes could partition a workout as desired (20.5), and 20.4’s 315/205 pound clean and jerk is the heaviest ever programmed in an Open workout.
• A workout from the third week of the Open has still never been repeated.
• First time that C2B pull-ups were not programmed.
• First time the same time domain has been used three times (20 minutes), which is also the most used time domain in Open history used 9 times now.

Lay of the land: Final score submissions still need to settle on the leaderboard. Affiliate owners have until Wednesday at 5:00 PM PT to validate score submission plus we’re still waiting on potential penalty announcements from 20.3, 20.4 and 20.5 video submission. CrossFit has been requesting the videos of all top 40 athletes worldwide to submit their recorded videos each week.

• CrossFit has until December 16 at 5:00 PM PT to finalize the video review process for both national champions and top 20 worldwide. At this point, the Open leaderboard will be finalized.
• CrossFit will invite the top 20 and national champions no later than January 6, 2020.

The current cut off line for the top 20, as of 5:00 PM PT:

• Men: 26th (though realistically it’s probably 28th as both Froning and Panchik are competing on a team).
• Women: 32nd

Preliminary overall results (hat tip to Chad Schroeder for compiling these).

• Sara Sigmundsdottir becomes the first woman to win the Open three times.
• Mathew Fraser loses his first competition since coming in 7th in the 2016 Open.
• Jeffery Adler holding onto the slightest tiebreak margin for the Open win (video review penalties are ultra critical).  Previous best Open finish worldwide was 26th last year.
• Kristin Holte earned her second Open podium finish.
• Tia-Clair Toomey and Patrick Vellner who are very familiar with the CrossFit Games Podium both make it onto their first Open podium.
• Tyler Christophel’s and Cedric LaPointe’s winning appeals were critical in making the cut.

Notables underneath the cut off who are NOT national champion:

• Men: Elliot Simmonds (27, and also missing UK National Championship by 1 point), Sean Sweeney (29), Brent Fikowski (34), Spencer Panchik (36), Will Moorad (48), Khan Porter (52), Alec Smith (56), Jason Carroll (57), Saxon Panchik (63), and Matt McLeod (83).
• Women: Maddie Sturt (33), Alexis Johnson (38), Jessica Griffith (41, 20.2 penalty was a death knell), Stephanie Chung (42), Bethany Shadburne (43), and Paige Semenza (52).

What’s next: The Sanctionals season officially kicks off in Dublin, Ireland with the Filthy150. Though several athletes competing are in a relatively safe qualification spot, athletes won’t have Games qualification confirmation yet so no one can take anything for granted. In fact, it’s looking like athletes won’t know until after Dubai CrossFit Championship, the fourth Sanctional of the season, that they’re squarely “in.”

• With that in mind, expect top athletes taking nothing for granted at the next four events as even one major penalty could be enough to knock someone out of qualification.

Two things to know about backfilling:

• The top 20 backfills when an athlete who is national champion ranks in the top 20 worldwide.
• For example, Mathew Fraser is currently ranked 3rd worldwide but also the U.S. national champion. Therefore the top 20 line moves down to 21st. This will continue indefinitely.
• National champion spots will be backfilled only if that athlete earns a spot as a member of a team and elects to compete on a team. CrossFit will not backfill these spots if the athlete declines.