The Ten Most Startling Facts from the 2020 CrossFit Games Stage One

Even though the 2020 CrossFit Games is separated into two parts this year, there’s no shortage of new records set and unbelievable stats. Because the competition is in two-parts, Tia-Clair Toomey and Mathew Fraser haven’t won the CrossFit Games yet, but the points will reset before stage two so we’re counting this as another official CrossFit competition win under their belts.

1. Mathew Fraser is now the winningest male or female individual CrossFit athlete of all time. With last weekend’s win, that brings his total to 17 official CrossFit competition wins. If you don’t include the CrossFit Open, he’s won 10 straight events. The last time he lost an in-person competition was the 2015 CrossFit Games.
2. Both Tia-Clair Toomey and Mathew Fraser set new records for most CrossFit Games event wins: Toomey surpassed Annie Thorisdottir with 15 career event wins and Fraser passed Rich Froning with 19. Fraser has the most career event wins of any athlete in history, male or female.
3. ??? Mathew Fraser would have finished 235 points ahead of second-place when competing only against the top 5 athletes. Using the new five-athlete scoring table and measuring Fraser’s performance against the other four, the outlook doesn’t look good. Fraser would win four of the seven contests and take second in the other three. His margin of victory would be a whopping 275 points.
4. The United States females will get their first podium since 2014. An American woman hasn’t stood on the podium since Julie Foucher took third at the 2014 CrossFit Games. With three of five athletes qualifying for stage 2 being American, the streak is guaranteed to end as at least one athlete will take home some hardware.
5. Katrin Davidsdottir is the comeback queen of stage 1. After an ok 12th place finish in event 1 Friendly Fran and then bombing the 1 rep max front squat with a 27th place finish, she sat in 22nd place after the first two events. The sled dog went on to average a 4.8th place finish over the next five events, including two event wins to take the fourth qualifying spot. Oh, and by the way, this is her sixth straight CrossFit Games where she’s placed in the top 5 which is the same as Tia-Clair Toomey.
6. Had Chandler Smith rowed 0.1 seconds faster or held his handstand for just one more second, he would have qualified for the finals in Aromas. For sixth place finisher Kristin Holte, the situation is similar; she needed a 0.5 seconds faster row to take the fifth qualifying spot.
7. Nine of the ten athletes heading to California to compete next month live in the United States; only three are foreigners (Katrin Davidsdottir, Tia-Clair Toomey and Jeffrey Adler), making this the most North American top 5 field since 2013.
8. With an average age of just 22-years-old, four of the top 10 athletes represent one of the youngest fields ever at the Games: Brooke Wells (25), Haley Adams (19), Samuel Kwant (24) and Justin Medeiros (21). Even more mind-blowing is that only one of those athletes is a Games rookie: Justin Medeiros, and the other three already combine for a total of 12 individual Games appearances; 15 if you include Adams’ teenage divisions.
9. ???  Tia-Clair Toomey would likely have beat 28 male 2012 Games athletes in regular Diane. The comparisons are not exactly apples to apples but they’re close: both have the same amount of total reps (90), however the women’s barbell is 20 pounds lighter BUT there are strict deficit handstand push-ups, which kinda evens it out. When Diane was programmed at the 2012 Regionals, Toomey’s 2:28 Damn Diane would have been faster than 28 athletes who qualified for the Games including Scott Panchik, Rob Forte, Lucas Parker, Frederik Aegidius, Austin Malleolo and Matt Chan.
10. Mat Fraser’s 3:08 Friendly Fran time would have been 7th overall at the 2012 CrossFit Games, except that Fraser’s version was 20 pounds heavier, had chest-to-bar pull-ups and there were an additional 36 reps, which is a whopping 40% more reps than regular Fran.

The Morning Chalk Up will have full coverage of stage two of the 2020 CrossFit Games happening the week of October 19-25.