TYR Wodapalooza 2024: Elite Team Men’s Preview and Predictions

Image Credit: Down Under Championships

For the second year in a row, the TYR WZA format, will feature elite individual competition on Thursday and Friday, leading into elite team competition on Saturday and Sunday. Just like last year, the roster of athletes who have signed up or qualified for the team competition in Miami is impressive. Both the men’s and women’s team fields this year feature a combination of teams who earned an invite through their success in the 2023 Games season, and teams who punched their tickets through the TYR WZA online qualifier. 

The full picture of participants in the Elite Field of Wodapalooza is often not known until the last day or two before the competition, but from what I do know, here are my predictions for the elite individual men’s field, brought to you by our exclusive WZA partner STRIKE MVMNT.

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*Please note these are the most up to date lists I had available when writing and that changes are possible up until the start of competition. 

Five Favorites on the Men’s Side

This is possibly the most difficult group of five teams I’ve ever had to try to rank, all of them are heavily in contention for the podium, and likely believe they won’t just podium, but could win… and I have to agree. 

Ombre Hombres: Noah Ohlsen, Chandler Smith, Tola Morakinyo

Noah and Chandler have stood on the podium together in Miami each of the last two years (3rd in 2023, 1st in 2022). This year they replace Travis Mayer (more on him in a second) with Morakinyo who was on the sixth place team last year at WZA, and has been competing on teams in Miami since 2017. None of them are doing the individual competition this year, and they have experience on teams together last month in Australia at the Down Under Championships (they took 3rd). 

Tres Leches: Patrick Vellner, Travis Mayer, Bjorgvin Karl Gudmundsson

In three team appearances at WZA, Mayer has three podiums (add a second place from 2018 to Ohlsen and Smith’s achievements from above- Ohlsen was on that 2018 team as well). Vellner is coming off a team champion at WZA last year, and Gudmundsson was actually on Morakinyo’s team that took sixth last year… you staying with me? 

Team TYR: Ricky Garard, Dallin Pepper, Jayson Hopper

All three of these men also competed on a team last year, Pepper and Hopper narrowly missed the podium (taking 4th with James Spargue), while Garard’s team (with Tim Paulson and Matt Dlugos) placed seventh. On paper this is a better team than either of those were, but so are most of if not all of these five teams…

Team GOWOD: Justin Medeiros, Willy Georges, Jay Crouch

They aren’t the most outgoing men, but Crouch and Georges took second last year at WZA with Roman Khrennikov (don’t worry he’s on the next team). Slotting in Medeiros is a little different flavor, and similarly to the Hombres, none of these men are competing individually and that could matter with the margins at the top being so small. 

Team Picsil: Roman Khrennikov, Saxon Panchik, Jorge Fernandez

Khrennikov is the headliner and is coming off the second place last year as mentioned above, but Fernandez is a CrossFit Games team champion from this past summer with Invictus, and Saxon Panchik made a podium way back in 2017 with his brothers when he was still just 21 years old. 

Elite Men’s Team Predictions (Full Field)