Friends of the Week: Jonne Koski & Emma Lawson Lock Up Quarterfinal Titles

We are playing catch-up for a few “Friend of the Week” announcements as we got extremely busy during the Quarterfinal stage and we also wanted to wait for the CrossFit Games Quarterfinal leaderboard to finalize. But at the end, just like we did in the CrossFit Open, we decided to go with two athletes including our first repeat athlete.

Jonne Koski becomes our first repeat weekly award winner and he’s joined by superstar Emma Lawson as recipients for the two week period of April 15-28, 2024.

The 2024 CrossFit Games Quarterfinals

Koski continues his incredible 2024 CrossFit Games season, following his first career Open title with a Quarterfinal title. Koski finished with 54 points, beating reigning “Fittest Man on Earth” Jeffrey Adler by 12 points.

He’s the first male athlete, and third athlete overall, to win the first two stages of the current CrossFit Games Semifinal format.

Koski had two workout finishes in the top-10, one of just five athletes in the men’s division to record that feat. His best finish was in Workout 3 where he placed third in the world with a time of 15:12 in wall ball, lateral burpee box jump-over couplet. He then added a tenth place in Workout 3 with a time of 7:26.

He finished 11th worldwide in Workout 1 with 247 reps with his worst workout finish being 30th in Workout 4 with 59 clean and jerk reps.

A veteran of nine Games appearances, the native of Finland previous best in the Quarterfinals was in 2022 when he placed 20th worldwide. Last season he finished 34th. In 2021 he placed 24th.

He joins Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr and Mallory O’Brien as the only athletes to win both the Open and Quarterfinal stages in the same season.

For Lawson, the 19-year old Canadian continues to add accomplishments to her growing mantle of CrossFit achievements. She beat Alexis Raptis by two points to win her first Quarterfinal title. She was the only female athlete to record three top-10 workout finishes including finishing second in Workout 2.

She finished sixth in Workout 3 and 10th in Workout 1 with the final workout being her worst finish at 26th.

Since 2022 she has five top-10 finishes in Quarterfinal workouts. Her previous best Quarterfinal overall finish was 10th worldwide which she accomplished both last season and in 2022. In 2021 she ranked 44th.

Other Notable Performances

• Olivia Kerstetter (USA) – The 18-year old was the only athlete, man or women, to win multiple Quarterfinal workouts. She won Workout 1 with 243 reps, nine reps better than Gabi Migala. She once again showed her explosive power in Workout 4, winning with 72 clean and jerks, which actually tied her with Dani Speegle, but Kerstetter claimed the win due to a tie-breaker. Her two Quarterfinal workout wins give her three for her career, tying her with Ellie Turner for second on the women’s career Quarterfinal workout win list, one off of Toomey-Orr who has four victories. She also joined Toomey, Turner and Laura Horvath as the only women to win multiple workouts in the same season. Kerstetter would finish 56th worldwide, qualifying for her second-straight Semifinal.

Know a Great “Friend of the Week” Candidate?

If you’d like to submit an athlete to be considered for “Friend of the Week”, please email Patrick Clark at pc@bfriendlyfitness.com or submit through DM on the B.Friendly Fitness Instagram. For athletes to be considered, it must be for accomplishments for the preceding week (Monday-Sunday) and must be received no later than 5:00 p.m. EST the Tuesday after. Please include any verifiable results, links, and a brief explanation of why that athlete should be considered.