Watch: CrossFit Open Live, More Dave Castro Donkeys

My name is Ben Garves and today is Thursday, the 10th of October, 2019, and it is D-Day. By that I mean, Dave Castro Day. We get to find out what the deal is with Dave Castro’s donkeys. Not sure what I’m talking about? Check out yesterday’s episode for five entire minutes of CrossFit Open donkey talk.

Morning Chalk Up has another take and analysis on Dave Castro’s CrossFit Open hints. Tommy Marquez wrote in an article this morning proposing and defending the notion that every workout of the 2020 Open may be repeat workouts from previous years. This is the tenth anniversary-ish (the Open has moved months) of the CrossFit Open, and CrossFit has a tendency to celebrate its history and major milestones. It’s a great read: Tommy always does his research. Check it out and let me know your thoughts. You can find the link in my show notes at WODDITY.com. 

So the 2020 CrossFit Open starts today. There are officially four live streams, starting at 8 PM Eastern, 5 PM Pacific tonight. Watch 20.1 live from Austin, Texas, Sao Paulo, Brazil, Seoul, South Korea, and Toulouse, France.

I’ll actually be starting WODDITY’s live stream 30 minutes early with athlete introduction montages, event evaluation, and more. You can find the link in my show notes at WODDITY.com, or search YouTube for Ben Garves. Again, we’ll be kicking off at 4:30 Pacific and I’ll try to stay on for 30 minutes after Rich Froning and Scott Panchik throw down to discuss strategy and run a Q&A with your live chat. If I don’t sound excited, it’s because I’m cool as an excited cucumber.

Or maybe it’s those burpees and thrusters it sounds like we’re all stuck doing tomorrow. I mean…we GET to do tomorrow.

You’ve heard me list off the gigantic resume of Ben Bergeron here on the podcast before. He’s a coach to athletes like Brooke Wells, Katrin Davidsdottir, and Cole Sager, he’s part owner of a number of large fitness, nutrition, and apparel businesses, an author and fellow podcaster, but at the very core and from the start, Ben Bergeron has been a CrossFit affiliate gym owner. You can learn from Bergeron’s twelve years as a gym owner by attending his upcoming Affiliate Immersion event on December 10th and 11th. I have the link for you. If they’re sold out, have no fear. Another event is likely coming: the site notes they’ve hosted almost 200 affiliate owners and coaches since 2015.

Rich Froning took to Instagram yesterday to announce the start of registration for the Mayhem Classic qualifier. Their page is now live as a portion of the CrossFit Mayhem website. I’ve put the link in my show notes at WODDITY.com. The event is inviting the top five individual men and women from the CrossFit Open, and the top 25 men and women who register for their online qualifier. That online qualifier uses the 2020 CrossFit Open’s workouts.The Mayhem Classic will not host a team competition this year. Froning has said in the past that he will not host one until he’s done as a team competitor.

Froning is having a big day. He’ll face off with Scott Panchik tonight in Austin, Texas for the 20.1 Open announcement, and it was announced on Instagram that Rich will also be doing the team programming for the Dubai CrossFit Championship early next year. Froning was a critic of Dubai’s approach to team programming last year when the event chose to have teams complete individual events and simply added their scores together to rank the teams. Yes, this means Froning and his Mayhem Freedom team will not be competing in Dubai this year. They’ll instead head to other events.

CrossFit Filthy 150 will be the first Sanctional of the 2020 CrossFit Games season when it kicks off in late November. They had already announced big name athletes like Samantha Briggs and James Newbury, along with team Nation with Jen Smith, Carol-Ann Reason Thibault, Craig Kenney and Paul Tremblay. They posted about a slurry of additional talent this week. According to their Instagram, they’ll also be hosting Sean Sweeney, Jonne Koski, and Roman Khrennikov

And that’s it for news about CrossFit on Thursday, October 10th. Thanks for listening. Be sure to rate, review, and subscribe. It’s the best way to give back to the show, because it helps more people find us. I’m Ben Garves. 

By Ben Garves

Ben Garves is a digital product expert, author, entertainer, and activist. His portfolio of thought leadership in digital marketing and web experiences has included major clients like Microsoft, Google, Twitter, eBay, and Facebook. He’s also a freelance health and fitness journalist with over 400 stories written since 2018, a podcaster with 200 episodes to his name, and runs a YouTube channel with over 100 fitness and activism-oriented videos and live streams. Ben has founded the Fitness is for Everyone™ initiative to raise awareness about social injustice in both racial inequality and socioeconomic disparity in access to quality fitness and nutrition options around the globe.