It’s Normal to Have “Bad” Finishes at Rogue

Photo Credits: Fury Photography

In the history of the Rogue Invitational there have been only seven occurrences, out of a possible 194, in which any single athlete has had all single digit (9th or better on all events) place finishes at Rogue:

It’s happened four times for the men:

• Justin Medeiros – 2021
• Pat Vellner – 2020
• Noah Ohlsen – 2020
• Mat Fraser – 2019

And three times for the women:

• Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr – 2021 and 2019
• Sara Sigmundsdottir – 2019

That means it has only happened 3% of the time. 

Who can still join that club this year?

After one day, and one third of this year’s events there are only 5 athletes who still have a chance to join that elusive club: 

• Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr
• Gabriela Migala

• Jeff Adler
• Chandler Smith
• Pat Vellner

Bottom three finishes are ok at Rogue

On the flip side of that, of the top-5 finishers in the men’s and women’s field throughout the first five years of the Rogue Invitational (50 total possibilities), 14 of them have had at least one bottom five finish during the competition, and still found a path to a top-five overall finish: 

Six of those have happened in the women’s field:

Athlete	Year	“Bad” Finish	Overall Finish
Alex Gazan	2023	16th & 17th	5th
Ellie Turner	2022	17th	4th
Laura Horvath	2022	19th	1st
Haley Adams	2021	19th	5th
Laura Horvath	2021	19th	5th
Katrin Davidsdottir	2019	16th	4th

The other eight have happened for the men:

Athlete	Year	“Bad” Finish	Overall Finish
Ricky Garard	2023	18th	5th
Brent Fikowski	2023	16th	4th
Roman Khrennikov	2022	17th	5th
Pat Vellner	2022	17th	4th
Chandler Smith	2022	16th	2nd
Justin Medeiros	2022	16th	1st
Gui Malheiros	2021	19th	5th
Chandler Smith	2020	13th (out of 18)	4th

That means that 28% of the top five finishers in the history of Rogue have had at least one bottom five finish.

Already this year we see a possibility for that trend to continue

While at the current moment no one in the top-five had a bottom-five finish on day one of the 2024 Invitational, we can expect some of them to as the remaining two/thirds of the competition wears on. 

What we do already have are 4 women and 2 men in the top-10 who notched a bottom-five finish on day one. These athletes can’t really afford another one of those if they want a top-five finish (as you see above an athlete with two bottom-five finishes has placed top-5 only once before). But, should it be the case that they’ve already gotten that “bad” finish out of the way, they could very well be in position to add their name to this list. 

Those six athletes are:

Athlete	“Bad” Finish	Event Number	Overall Finish
Haley Adams	19	3	7
Emily Rolfe	18	2	8
Dani Speegle	18	1	9
Maddie Sturt	19	2	10
Gui Malheiros	20	1	7
Brent Fikowski	18	3	8

A Weekend You Don’t Want to Miss

If we know one thing about the Rogue Invitational it’s that things on the leaderboard can take big swings very quickly. The margins in every heat, on every event can be small and yield big changes on the leaderboard. Athletes would do best not to ever be discouraged by a “bad” finish at Rogue. Fans would do best not to miss a single second of the action.