2024 Rogue Invitational: Women’s Preview and Predictions

Photo Credits: Athlete’s Eye

By: Brian Friend and Patrick Clark

This weekend the Rogue Invitational, in its sixth year, makes its debut in Europe; Aberdeen, Scotland to be exact. The feature draw on the women’s field is the rematch everyone has been waiting for between Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr and Laura Horvath, but the field as a whole is exceptional with storylines to be told from top to bottom. Brian and PC put out there initial predictions for the men and women last week. Here they break down some of the reasoning for their selections ahead of their women’s preview show Monday afternoon.

Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr

Brian’s Pick: 1st
PC’s Pick: 1st

Is there any surprise here? Yes, Toomey-Orr did not win last year, ending her mind-blowing streak of 15-straight live competition victories dating back to the 2017 CrossFit Games (including three Rogue Championship belts), but what do you expect from someone who had just given birth 6-months earlier? It wasn’t for the lack of trying though, as she placed second behind Horvath in an exciting race that went down to the final event. Horvath took the event win in the finale resulting in a 10-point victory. However, what we learned from Toomey-Orr was that she was still a force to reckon with despite not being in prime competition shape. She still won two events and recorded another three top-three finishes adding to her Rogue record of 12 event wins. What she has done since last year’s Rogue is start another streak (two titles including the 2024 Games) and reassert her dominance. We now get a rematch one year later and a chance for her to reclaim the Alpha status of the women’s division. It’s agreed however, Toomey-Orr will win her record fourth Rogue Invitational title. – PC

Laura Horvath

Brian’s Pick: 2nd
PC’s Pick: 3rd

2022 Rogue Invitational champion, 2023 Games champion, 2023 Rogue Invitational champion, 2024 European Semifinal champion. And she has an ax to grind after this summer, but let’s keep the personal stuff out of it. Horvath has never missed a Rogue Invitational, and after being disqualified from the first one for an inability to do even one strict deficit handstand pushup, she’s only gotten better there (5th, 4th, 1st, 1st). In the last two years she’s had three bad events there, and yes, two of them involved handstand pushups. Two years ago she reeled off four-consecutive event wins at Rogue, last year, besides the handstand pushups, she never finished worse than 5th on any event. Because she can dominate (finish top 3) on so many other things, unless there’s a rule that disqualifies her for her “weakness”, she’s a podium lock and unlikely to lose to anyone other than Toomey-Orr. – Brian 

Gabriela Migała

Brian’s Pick: 3rd
PC’s Pick: 2nd

There’s some bias here, and not much data to back it up other than me saying I think Migała is prime to “level-up”. I said it before the Games when I picked her to finish second at the Games, I was right, but that was without Horvath competing. But what can’t be denied is that she’s clearly taken those lessons learned with her former training partner over the last two years and looks better than ever. The Rogue Invitational is where I initially saw her potential, during the 2021 Rogue Invitational she placed third, 20 points ahead of Horvath. Since that time Migała has been closing the gap between herself and Horvath as well as building confidence and fitness. Migała beat Horvath at the 2023 European Semifinals before Horvath took the 2024 Semifinal. I expect a back-and-forth affair between these two with Migała taking the runner-up spot. – PC

Alex Gazan

Brian’s Pick: 4th
PC’s Pick: 6th

Gazan made her first appearance at Rogue last year and placed 5th, pretty damn good. She had two event wins (“Seat at the Bar” and “Max Deadlift”), and three other top-five finishes to go with it. She was 40 points behind Migala, and 60 points behind Lawson (who isn’t in this field), and most of the issue for her was back-to-back finishes of 16th (the Circus) and 17th (10th inning); the two aforementioned women ahead of her had no finishes worse than 11th. – Brian

Brooke Wells

Brian’s Pick: 10th
PC’s Pick: 4th

Wells makes her return to the Rogue Invitational since competing in the 2020 online competition where she placed 10th. She competed in the inaugural event in 2019, placing seventh. For various reasons, health being the main one, she has skipped out on the annual showcase. This has been a shame because I believe we are witnessing the best version of Wells. Since the 2020 Rogue Invitational, Wells, when healthy, has competed at a very high level including the 2022 Games where she placed fifth and this past year when she finished 11th. The programming for Rogue is tailor-made for an athlete like her. You can’t tell me that she wouldn’t have been fun to watch last year during the max deadlift event. She will have more homeruns, especially in strongwoman pulling and odd-object events, that Rogue is known for. If Rogue takes any inspiration from Scotland’s Highland Games, expect Wells to record some high finishes. – PC

Arielle Loewen

Brian’s Pick: 5th
PC’s PicK: 5th

Loewen will be making her 4th-straight Rogue Invitational appearance, and her trajectory is something out of a dream: 13th in 2021, 10th, in 2022, 8th last year… and I think she’ll improve again this time around. Two of the women who beat her last year (Lawson and Cary) aren’t competing, and Brandon (see below) does not seem to be coming in with the same vigor she had last year. Forget the fact that Loewen is still getting better, the women’s field is missing some tough competitors who were there last year, which makes it even more likely for her to capitalize on it and secure a fourth consecutive better finish at Rogue. – Brian 

Maddie Sturt

Brian’s Pick: 6th
PC’s Pick: 7th

Sturt makes her Rogue Invitational debut, making her one of the more experienced rookies in this year’s field. The Australian’s Games comeback this past season has been a longtime coming as she last appeared in 2019. She made her return a memorable one, finishing a career-best eighth. Since making the switch to PRVN Training last year she has made noticeable improvements in her fitness. Could a Horvath/Migała level-up situation be true for Sturt now that she’s learning from Toomey-Orr? It certainly looks like it, especially since she has shown some improvements in her strength numbers, tenth in the clean ladder at the Games, which Rogue has a tendency to favor. – PC

Haley Adams

Brian’s Pick: 7th
PC’s Pick: 11th

It’s been a couple years since Adams has been at Rogue. The two previous times she’s competed she’s been 8th (online in 2020) and 5th (2021), not bad for someone who is not known for being strong in a competition that is known for rewarding strength… So how has she done it? Well, finishing in the top-6 in more than half of the Rogue events she’s ever participated in is a good start. She returned to competition this season and appears to be in similar form relative to the field compared to when she left, don’t see why it would be any different at Rogue. – Brian

Paige Semenza

Brian’s Pick: 15th
PC’s Pick: 8th

Even after a career-best 8th place Games finish this year, Semenza still has to be the most underrated woman in CrossFit. The argument can be made that her successful Games season started at last year’s Rogue Invitational when she turned a back-fill spot into a 14th place finish, including four top-10 finishes. At the time, her best finish against that collection of high-end athletes. She used that confidence and lessons learned from Rogue last year to propel her to a banner season. I’m betting on Semenza to continue improving, her personal history is on her side. Since making her rookie Games appearance in 2018 (32nd), she is the only woman to improve on her Games finish every year she has competed. – PC

Danielle Brandon

Brian’s Pick: 8th
PC’s Pick: 9th

Brandon, like Loewen, has only ever improved at Rogue. In the last four years she’s been 15th, 11th, 9th, and 7th… so why drop her down (even if it’s only by a spot or two this year)? Mostly because she’s said she’s been struggling to get into the zone. Even last year, in her best year at Rogue, she had four finishes out of the top-10, and two in the bottom five, it’s difficult to place too much higher than she did then with nearly have the events in the bottom half of the field. – Brian

Sydney Wells

Brian’s Pick: 17th
PC’s Pick: 10th

I grouped Sydney Wells, Adams and Rolfe together in my predictions based on their skill set and aerobic capacity which isn’t a huge component of programming historically at the Rogue Invitational. What I think sets Wells apart from the other three is that she’s approaching Rogue Invitational as her Games due to her being famously (or infamously) penalized in Quarterfinals, cutting her season short. However, it’s been “no rest for the weary” for her, she’s been training since that moment and her performance during the “Q” showed she has added some strength. I like how motivated she has been to prove herself as a legitimate CrossFit athlete. She has a lot of upside and this year has shown that. – PC

Emma Tall

Brian’s Pick: 9th
PC’s Pick: 13th

I’d probably say this is the “riskiest” pick I’ve made for Rogue this year, but Tall certainly showed her class at Semifinals in Lyon last Spring, where she was only 18 points behind Migala. Before withdrawing from the Games she had taken 4th and 5th on the only two events she did. She’s a Rogue rookie, so there’s no solid data to go on from prior events there, but there are no competition results from the last two seasons that suggest she isn’t capable of a top-10 finish here. – Brian 

Emily Rolfe

Brian’s Pick: 11th
PC’s Pick: 12th

Like I stated earlier with Sydney Wells, I feel like Rolfe and Adams fall in the same category of very fit monostructral athletes who might struggle with the traditional strongman and strength-based workouts that Rogue is known for. Rolfe does have a more extensive history than those two athletes, competing in 2021 and placing 16th, last year she improved by one spot. Rolfe does have momentum on her side coming off an impressive performance at the Games, placing third after her previous high Games finish being 12th in 2023. She will be the oldest athlete in the women’s field at 34 but as she showed at the Games it doesn’t matter. – PC

Manon Angonese

Brian’s Pick: 12th
PC’s Pick: 17th

Angonese has now qualified for Rogue via the “Q” online qualifier for three consecutive seasons, and the online qualifiers from the women’s side historically do better than the men’s side- in fact in the four years there were online qualifiers, 11 women have finished 12th or better at Rogue, and Angonese is two of those data points (11th in 2022, 10th in 2023). Why can’t she do it again? – Brian

Taylor Williamson

Brian’s Pick: 13th
PC’s Pick: 14th

It seems odd to me that this will be Taylor Williamson’s first individual appearance at the Rogue Invitational. Yes she’s a team athlete (two-time Games champion) who’s a full-time Physical Assistant and semi-retired athlete, but she’s no stranger to Rogue, more specifically their “Challenges” having won quite a few of them over the years. Obviously, she’s pretty fit and she very rarely competes as an individual when she was an active athlete. But she does have current data as an individual, last year she competed at the Down Under Championship, placing fourth behind Maddie Sturt, Anikha Greer and Grace Walton and ahead of 2024 Games athletes Daisy McDonald, Aimee Cringle, Emily DeRooy and Marnie Sykes (DeRooy and Sykes competed on teams). I think if she wasn’t such a great team athlete she could have made the Games as an individual, just like long-time teammate Andrea Nisler. In fact in 2020 she placed 30th in the Open worldwide (11th in the United States). She placed third in the “Q”, just two points behind Sydney Wells, winning workouts 3 and placing second in workout 1. – PC

Dani Speegle

Brian’s Pick: 14th
PC’s Pick: 15th

Speegle was 8th at the inaugural Rogue Invitational in 2019, missed two years, then came back with a 12th and a 9th the last two years. Last year she was 1st on the Duel and 2nd on max deadlift, and she needs event placements like that if she’s going to place in the top-10 again. The Duel style format just seems a little random to me, and I’m not sure if they’ll do it for a fourth straight season. She’s also had two bottom three finishes each of the last two years, and I don’t really see that changing. It feels like a harsh pick, but I’m projecting a little bit less in terms of top-three finishes, and that hurts on the leaderboard. – Brian 

Dana Paran

Brian’s Pick: 19th
PC’s Pick: 16th

Paran probably comes in as a relative unknown to most people but Bill and Caity Henniger are familiar with her. The native Chicagoan won two “Rogue Challenges” in 2023, “Heavy Grace” and the “Triple Challenge”. Known as a “power-output” athlete, which was put on display in the “Q” when she placed third in workout 3 and 4, she is coming off her most successful season as a CrossFit athlete. Since moving to Norwegian-based Kriger Training prior to the Games season, she has increased her fitness, placing a career-best 134th in the Open, 82nd in the Quarterfinals and 22nd in the North America East Semifinal. Talking to the Kriger camp, she’s rapidly improving with their goal being to make her more well-rounded.

Amanda Barnhart

Brian’s Pick: 16th
PC’s Pick 18th

Barnhart wasn’t at Rogue last year, but the three years prior to that she finished 10th or better (7th online in 2020, 10th in 2021, 6th in 2022). During that time she was also consistently placing in the top-15 at the Games. She regressed to 24th at the Games in 2023, and missed the Games altogether last season, taking 14th at the NA East Semifinal, where she was certainly in the fight, but never quite looked like the Barnhart of old. Could some of the magic be back, absolutely. But I’m betting against it. – Brian 

Emma McQuaid

Brian’s Pick: 18th
PC’s Pick: 19th

Where Semenza is trending the right direction as a veteran athlete, McQuaid is on the opposite end of the spectrum unfortunately. Her placings in CrossFit competitions have taken a turn for the worse since the start of the 2023 season. After back-to-back 12th place finishes at the Games in 2021 and 2022, she placed a career-worst 36th in an injury-riddled 2023 season. Last year she bounced back with 25th place but noticeably struggled and the question after the Games for her was “will she call it quits”? She does have two Rogue Invitational appearances, placing an impressive 9th in 2021 and then seeing a slight decline in her final appearance in 2022, finishing 13th but she did pick up her lone career Rogue event win in the “Snatch & Press”. – PC

Tayla Howe

Brian’s Pick: 20th
PC’s Pick: 20th

Maybe the most difficult athlete to really project in this field. It’s her first Rogue Invitational, she’s never made the CrossFit Games, she was 20th at the European Semi in 2023, and missed it altogether last season. She made it into this field through the qualifier, and is coming off a win in a pairs competition in Germany a couple weekends ago with her partner Reggie Fasa, but altogether, she’s the least accomplished athlete in the field (her most notable finish is 13th at WZA in 2022) and needs to earn the right to be ranked any higher than this against this group of women. – Brian