The True Strength of Field for 2023

Brian Friend and Mike Halpin propose a new method to determine who competes at each stage of the CrossFit Games season

Research provided by Mike Halpin
Image Credit - Athlete’s Eye

It is no secret that CrossFit has made an effort this year to present its community with a system which is intended to create a more accurate representation of the competitive landscape within the sport of fitness. 

It’s also no secret that from the onset I have been adamantly opposed to the system they put forth; not because it’s a bad idea (I’ve been doing something similar to this for years), but because it is not an accurate representation of the CURRENT competitive landscape. 

This is not an article explaining what’s wrong with that system though, that has been done more than enough. Instead, this is my solution to the questions everyone’s been asking: if their system is flawed, what system would you use?

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This began as a hypothesis, but in the end we were pretty happy with what our first effort looked like. There are definitely questions that need to be answered in other areas of the administration of the CrossFit Games season, but we cannot do much about those for now. So, given the tests we’ve been given in the first two stages of the season, and the review process (also severely flawed) that has been carried out, let us explain our 15% threshold system for more accurately capturing what is actually happening at the elite level of the sport this year. 

Note: This entire study is done based uniquely on the 2023 Open and Quarterfinals. The athletes competing would not have known about this study, and therefore may have put in varying levels of effort. The same can be said for the current Open to QFs to SFs process. 

We acknowledge that because we are applying a study to a group of athletes who did not know we would be doing so, it does have the potential to skew the results. However, in changing as little as we could, we wanted to run a test to see what it would look like to use only this year’s field of athletes, compared to each other, to assess the competitive lay of the land.

THE OPEN

Every stage of the CrossFit season is unique, and yet, all the qualifying stages should also have one thing in common. They should be a vetting stage for the next round. 

• The Open should be testing a baseline of strength, skills and capacity that will be necessary for Quarterfinals
• The Quarterfinals should be doing that for Semifinals
• And the Semifinals should be doing that for the Games

Whether that is actually something Adrian Bozman and his team consider is unclear. We saw a large percentage of athletes advance from the Open to Quarterfinals this year that were clearly (based on their Open performances) not qualified to be taking the tests presented in Quarterfinals. 

So, we introduce the 15% Threshold: in order to qualify for Quarterfinals athletes must finish in the top 15% worldwide on EVERY Open test against the field of PARTICIPATING athletes. 

WOMEN

For the Women they would have needed  to meet these thresholds: 

Minimum Work	Under 15%
23.1	30 Cleans by 11:34
23.2A	5 Rounds + 2 burpee pull-ups
23.2B	147lbs
23.3	8 strict HSPUs

Here are the number of women who did so:

Region Summary	Starting	Qualified	%
NAE	31,650	1,293	4%
NAW	23,011	961	4%
EUR	31,222	1,056	3%
OCE	7,574	311	4%
ASA	4,538	95	2%
AFR	2,352	63	3%
SAM	5,565	329	6%
	105,912	4,108

MEN

For the Men they would have needed to meet these thresholds: 

Minimum Work	Under 15%
23.1	8 RMU
23.2A	5rds + 18 Burpee Pull-Ups
23.2B	228 lbs
23.3	20 sHSPU + 50 DUs

Here are the number of men who did so: 

Region Summary	Starting	Qualified	%
NAE	40,898	1,916	4.68%
NAW	29,941	1,356	4.53%
EUR	57,033	2,089	3.66%
OCE	9,369	473	5.05%
ASA	10,474	402	3.84%
AFR	4,144	147	3.55%
SAM	9,031	548	6.07%
	160,890	6,931

That means a total of 4,108 women and 6,931 men would have been ELIGIBLE to compete in Quarterfinals (you can see the breakdown by competitive region above the blue highlighted numbers in those columns). 

Looking at what was required to meet the 15% minimum it makes sense considering the weights and skills required in the Quarterfinal stage as well:

• Particularly the ability to do strict handstand pushups (which only became more important and difficult in QFs)
• And the ability to thruster a minimum threshold that is far more in line with the required strength for the front squats and clean and jerks in QF workouts 1 and 3 respectively 

THE QUARTERFINALS

Since the 15% threshold worked so well for vetting athletes in the Open, we decided to start there for Quarterfinals as well. This time we only took the athletes who qualified for Quarterfinals using our 15% thresholds and competed in Quarterfinals. Taking those performances we once again require athletes to perform in the top 15% of all five Quarterfinal tests against the field of participating athletes only. Knowing this stage has to be critical in terms of screening for the Semifinal stage, it’s imperative to measure against those who are actually doing the test, not just people eligible for it or who signed up but did not do it. 

WOMEN

The minimum thresholds for 15% on each Quarterfinal test were: 

Minimum Work
1	85 reps & 11:00 Tiebreak
2	5 rounds + 8 DB snatches
3	9:18
4	2 rounds + 160-meter row
5	9:01

And the number of women by competitive region who met these thresholds:

Region	Count	%
North America West	58	22.8%
Europe	75	29.5%
North America East	79	31.1%
South America	12	4.7%
Asia	4	1.6%
Africa	1	0.4%
Oceania	25	9.8%
TOTAL	254

MEN

The minimum thresholds for 15% on each Quarterfinal test were: 

Minimum Work	Under 15%
1	11:53
2	5 rounds + 7 DB snatches
3	9:19
4	2 rounds + 540-meter row
5	7:10

And the number of men by competitive region who met these thresholds:

Region	Count	%
North America West	45	15.7%
Europe	109	38.1%
North America East	77	26.9%
South America	21	7.3%
Asia	6	2.1%
Africa	4	1.4%
Oceania	24	8.4%
TOTAL	286

And finally, we have an actual picture of what the Current state of competitive CrossFit, for this season, in the elite individual field looks like. There are a total of 254 women and 286 men who have proven they are capable of taking the Semifinal test. However, not necessarily all of them would; and this is slightly outside the scope of this article, but at this point we’d likely still cap all Semifinal fields at 60*.

*In general we are trying to change as little as possible from the current layout for the season. 

GAMES SPOTS DISTRIBUTION

CrossFit Games organizers have talked about testing different size fields when using the D’Hondt method for distributing Games spots. But all of them were based on arbitrarily chosen numbers and using a WWR system which does not really capture what this year’s competitive field looks like. 

That is why even though not all 254 and 286 will necessarily compete at Semifinals, those are the numbers we’ve chosen to use when allocating Games spots for the 2023 season. 

Africa and Asia

In this model we determine that Africa and Asia do not have enough eligible participants to warrant hosting their own Semifinals; so we would propose a Africa/Asia hybrid Semifinal in the UAE to host the 10 men and 5 women combined from those two continents to participate in the Africa-Asia Semifinal for 2023. 

Maintaining that every competitive region gets a minimum of 1 Games allocation, this is what the distribution of Games spots would look like for 2023:

WOMEN

Region	Region % of All Qualified	D’Hondt Allocation (1 min)	SF Spots
North America West	22.83	9	58
Europe	29.53	12	60
North America East	31.10	12	60
South America	4.72	2	12
Africa/Asia	1.97	1	5
Oceania	9.84	4	25
TOTAL	100.00	40	220

MEN

Super Regions	Region % of All Qualified	D’Hondt Allocation (1 min)	Sf Spots
North America West	15.73	6	45
Europe	38.11	15	60
North America East	26.92	10	60
South America	7.34	3	21
Africa/Asia	3.50	2	10
Oceania	8.39	4	24
TOTAL	100.00	40	220

The European Misperception

For those who have been following my work for years, you may recall that on multiple occasions I’ve suggested that there is no group in the world being slighted more than the women in Europe. And that was in fact true, at that time. 

However, unlike the current WWR and SoF system that CrossFit is using, our system does not account for what used to be. Rather, it accounts for what actually is now. 

And in the current competitive landscape, we see that it is in fact the European Men, not the European Women, who are not being adequately represented this season. 

Based on their performance this season, they have earned 15 Games spots, one less than North American men (6 + 10). 

The nice thing about this model is that it keeps up with the actual field of competitors year to year. 

To Summarize: 

We believe this model is the true representation of the strength of field for this year’s group of competitive athletes competing in the CrossFit Games Season. 

• They were vetted through the Open and performed in the top 15% on ALL tests against all worldwide participants.
• They were vetted through the Quarterfinals and performed in the top 15% on ALL tests against all worldwide participants (who previously had proven themselves in the Open AND chose to participate in Quarterfinals).
• Once we established the group who, based on performance, are qualified to tackle the next stage of the test (Semifinals), we used them to distribute Games qualifying spots.
• We believe this will yield Semifinal fields that are composed of athletes who are actually capable of taking the tests.
• And ultimately a Games field that will be both a global representation of athletes, and an accurate depiction of where the best athletes this season are coming from. 

Reader’s Contributions

We know that we pour alot into efforts like this, but we also know there are things we have the potential to overlook or not consider. If you feel there is something we have not considered in the production of this study please drop a comment below.