The Open Report: Week 3

Days until the 2024 CrossFit Open: 21

(Register for the Open now)

The Service Open is BACK!

On January 30th, the CrossFit Games team announced on its social media channels that “The Service Open is Back in the 2024 CrossFit Open!” 

• The initial announcement went on to state that this would be both an initial Open competition and to tease a second stage, a virtual competition later this season. 

I reached out to the CrossFit Games team, inquiring if this meant that the Occupational Games was fully back as it was in 2022, and was told it’s still early and details are being ironed out with more to come soon. 

Remind me: Announced in 2021 by Dave Castro, the Occupational Games was held concurrently with the Age-Group Online Quarterfinals on the same weekend with the same workouts. This dual competition allowed many athletes who qualified within the top 10% of their division/region to also compete for the title of fittest in their service-related profession. 

The virtual competition only lasted two seasons, with the announcement in 2023 during a press conference that CrossFit Games would no longer be holding the Occupational Games. Last year, during the 2023 season, Rich Froning and Mayhem Athlete filled the gap that CrossFit left behind for service professional athletes to compete by holding the Mayhem’s Everyday Hero Games. 

The Service Open dates back to at least 2017 and has existed in a few different iterations over the years and the professions included have shifted. 

• Mike’s Internal Monologue: So wait…can I be the Fittest CrossFit Games Analyst? Well no, for two reasons. First, it’s not a profession that is tracked for the Service Open but, even if it was, John Young is way fitter than you.

Here are the occupations that the CrossFit Games has included in the 2024 Service Open:

• Affiliate Owner | CrossFit Trainer | Medical Professional 
• Educator | Military Veteran | Active Duty Military 
• Law Enforcement | Firefighter | First Responder

What we see above is a list of occupations in which individuals serve their community. 

In 2017, that list also included Students and GarageCrossFitters, not really professions but a large contingent of athletes. 

Those ‘non-profession’ type options over the previous years gave way to what we see today ‘YOUR #HASHTAG LEADERBOARDS’, where anyone can create a custom hashtag and, in turn, a custom leaderboard. 

• From #Mom to #YOLO, there is likely a category for you. 

From my understanding, this appears to be how the Service Open will be tracked as well, which gives insight into who has registered so far. When you register for the Open you are asked for any custom hashtags, but there is a separate drop-down to select one of the following service occupations that aligns with CrossFit’s Service Open announcement:

#activedutymilitary
#educator
#firefighter
#firstresponder
#lawenforcementofficer
#medicalprofessional
#militaryveteran

Not included in the registration but also a part of the Service Open are the tags #crossfittrainer and #affiliateowner

Here is what those occupations look like for registrations so far as of 3 PM EST on February 7:

Of the current 125,772 registered athletes, 38,788 are in the Service Open. That’s 30.84%, nearly 1 in 3 athletes in a division that went uncrowned last season. Nearly half of those are women. 

I, personally, am hoping to see a local firefighter in my area and the 2013 CrossFit Games fittest woman on Earth, Sam Briggs, compete in the Occupational Games for fittest firefighter this year. 

• Sam was a firefighter from 2004-2013 for the West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service, and, as of August 2022, is a firefighter for the City of Hamilton’s Fire Department in Ohio…
• Oh and she is the current Masters 40-44 division champion, a decade apart from her first championship. 
• In a recent keynote speech honoring the City of Hamilton’s Citizen and Small Business Person of the Year, Briggs told the crowd of hundreds, “a dream without action is just a wish. You have to be willing to put in the work to make that dream a reality.” And according to the Journal-News, “daring to dream was also what she [Briggs] needed to return to that first passion, the fire service, joining the Hamilton Fire Department at the spry age of 40.”

So, dream big, make the dream a reality, and register for the Open alongside your fellow service members! 

Very happy to see this back with a renewed focus in 2024 after a year off.

Here is Week 3 of Open registration tracking:

Reminder: Dates and info for the 2024 Open:

• Registration started on January 9 at noon PT
• Open Workout 24.1 starts on February 29 at noon PT
• Open Workout 24.3 ends on March 18 at 5 PM PT

That gives us a window of 52 total days for registration prior to the first workout, plus 19 days between workouts 24.1 and 24.3.

• Check out the 2024 Open Schedule

(Editor’s Note: All data below this point for the 2024 CrossFit Open was pulled from the CrossFit leaderboard on Wednesday, February 7th at 3 PM ET.)

We are now 30 days into the registration window and 21 days until the Open begins.

BIG NEWS: Since the first of the month, we are now over 100,000 registrants! I reached out to the CrossFit Games team to get some background on this milestone compared to previous seasons. Here is what they shared:

Year – Days to 100K Registrations

• 2017 – 19
• 2018 – 18
• 2019 – 27
• 2020 – 38
• 2021 – 47
• 2022 – 26
• 2023 – 68
• 2024 – 23

The Games team noted that in 2021 and 2023 the registration runway started much earlier than what we see in ‘22 and now ‘24. The 2024 ‘Days to 100K’ falls squarely between 2018 and 2019 at 23 days and is a great identifier for what may be to come when we get to the start of the Open.

The current 2024 registration total is growing at an average rate of around 3,743 each day after the initial day 1 of 20,982. Compared to previous years:

Past 7-Day Comparison Year-Over-Year

Note: The 2023 Open registration started on November 17, 2022, with an incentive from NOBULL to register prior to December 31. In 2022, Open registration started on January 13, similar to 2024.

The bottom line: In the third week of tracking, we are already seeing milestones aligning with peak registration years of the past and the returned focus on service members should go a long way to add value for CrossFit athletes in a demographic that may have felt forgotten last year.

Check out @known_knowable on Instagram for daily check-ins.

• THERE’S ALWAYS MORE!: Additional data I’ve been tracking along with a few suggestions from readers and commentators on Instagram.

Open Division – Registration by Region and Division then 10% cut and 25% cut

MEN

WOMEN

Top 15 Countries, by Athlete Nationality

Total Affiliate Count 2018-2024

*Note: For these two years, the count of registrations for each affiliate is blank, so it’s not possible to see if affiliates may have been listed with zero registrations, which does show up on ‘22-’24.

Top 10 Affiliates Registered for 2024

Registrations by Age Group Divisions