Annie and Katrin are back with more episodes of Dottir Talks, LifeAid’s new series talks athlete motherhood, and Friday’s announcement from CrossFit makes a deep cut to the 2020 CrossFit Games field.
Good morning and welcome to the WODDITY podcast for news about CrossFit. We are a daily podcast, Monday through Friday, doing CrossFit news in five minutes or less.
My name is Ben Garves and today is Tuesday, the 12th of May, 2020. Don’t forget, links to all of these stories are in the show notes of your friendly neighborhood podcasting app, as well as on the new WODDITY.com.
Annie and Katrin Continue Dottir Talks
Katrin Davidsdottir and Annie Thorisdottir have continued their Dottir Talks series on YouTube. Episode three talks through how Annie discovered CrossFit and earned her invite to her first CrossFit Games. It’s a story we don’t hear told very often. On the flipside, episode four is a little more broad. The two touch on mental buy-in, going all-in as a full-time athlete, how they avoid using common excuses as an emotional crutch, and what Katrin’s experience was like when she made her first-ever appearance at the CrossFit Games.
LifeAid’s Docuseries on Mothers of Fitness
LifeAid kicked off the first episode of their new docuseries, Mothers of Fitness on their YouTube channel on Sunday. The series features a fit mom each episode and talks through their life experiences, the kinds of sacrifices and life changes they’ve had to make as mothers, and how they go about juggling being a good mom and a good athlete.
Texas and Montana Opening Gyms Early
As lockdowns continue to lift throughout the United States, coming up on the calendar are the reopening of gyms in Texas and Montana. I’m tossing in two stories from local news sources featuring details about a gym in each state and the efforts they’re making to open safely. I think I’m just sad because New York is still very far from being able to open. As always, stay safe and be smart if you choose to reopen. At this point, I’ve lost two extended family members to this virus.
CrossFit Cuts Majority of 2020 CrossFit Games Field
You’re probably heard a lot about it in the last 72 hours, but let’s talk about this. CrossFit has made the announcement of their tough decision to cut the majority of the 2020 CrossFit Games field to only about 60 athletes. This impacts hundreds of National Champion competitors, elite teams, and the age group field cut last week. Nobody likes the news, but the decision was a pragmatic one. CrossFit’s resize of the event is to fit regulations they anticipate will exist in California in August, along with what fits the capacity of Dave Castro’s family ranch in Aromas.
At the most basic level, the field has been trimmed to the top 20 CrossFit Open finishers in both the men and women’s field, along with the male and female champions of the 10 Sanctional events which were able to run this season.
Also impacted are three categories of athlete:
- Any competitors who received invites as trickle-down from National Champions in the top-20 of the Open. Impacted are athletes like Chandler Smith and Roy Gamboa. An example of a National Champion who now just qualifies as a top-20 athlete in the Open would be CrossFit Open winner Patrick Vellner.
- The second category is athletes who received invites from Sanctional events because someone finished above them but had already qualified through the CrossFit Open. Notably, this includes Kelsey Kiel.
- And the third category is athletes who had received invites because other athletes had declined individual CrossFit Games invites to compete on a team. This would include legendary competitor and 2015 CrossFit Games champion Ben Smith. Athletes who had declined invites to go team include Brooke Haas and Rich Froning.
Another big outstanding question is what international travel could look like in August.
Invitees like Bjorgvin Karl Gudmundsson of Iceland and Roman Khrennikov of Russia may struggle to travel.
This could be a bigger problem on the womens’ side, because only eight athletes who have qualified are in North America. Those likely to face some form of travel issues may include Sara Sigmundsdottir, Kristin Holte, Jamie Greene, Emma McQuaid, Kara Saunders, and Laura Horvath.
CrossFit has been clear that both the age groups and the national champions will return in 2021, something that should be a comfort to athletes concerned about the future of those two programs.
And that’s it for news about CrossFit for Tuesday, May 12th. Thanks for listening. Please be sure to rate, review, subscribe, and share. For WODDITY, I’m Ben Garves. Behave yourselves out there.
