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

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 Women’s Side

The women’s team field doesn’t quite have the starpower it did last year, when we saw a nail-biting finish between possibly the two best women’s teams of three ever assembled (Laura Horvath, Gabi Migala, and Jamie Simmonds edging out Annie Thorisdottir, Katrin Davidsdottir, and Mallory O’Brien in the final event), but it is extremely well balanced with some highly competitive teams who all have strong cases for both the podium and the victory.

Team Ice Barrel: Brooke Wells, Paige Powers, Baylee Rayl

On paper this team is the strongest group of individual athletes on a team in Miami this year with 14 combined CrossFit Games appearances and Powers coming off her first Games top-ten and winning the elite women’s competition in Miami last year. They’ll be up against a host of other women’s teams who may not have the same individual resumes, but do have some serious team accomplishments under their belts.

Plus Ultra: Devyn Kim, Kyra Milligan, Jessi Smith

The top online qualifiers this year boast three athletes who all competed on different teams at the Games this past summer. Kim was on the championship team with Invictus, Milligan competed on Mayhem Independence and placed 7th, Smith was on Invictus Unconquerable who took 28th, but also picked up the win and some team of three experience in Australia at the Down Under Championship last month. 

Team Scandinadian: Rebecka Vitesson, Matilde Garnes, Anikha Greer

A late change to the roster sees Vitesson swap in for Lena Richter, and changes the dynamic of this losing the experience of Richter’s three-straight CrossFit Games podiums, and prior WZA team title from 2022. However, Vitesson is coming off a breakthrough year in which she made the Games and  Garnes also competed on a team in Miami in 2022 when she placed 5th. Greer has never done a team at WZA, but was 12th as an individual in 2022 and lives in Miami (home field advantage anyone?) and has had a busy offseason competing as an individual athlete. They are absolutely a threat to win this outright.

Rx Performance: Camilla Salomonson Hellman, Maria Langfors, Antonia Falt-Kottulinksy 

Maybe the least well known names collectively of these five teams, but this is a highly competitive and experienced team from Sweden. Hellman qualified for three consecutive CrossFit Games before giving birth a couple of years ago. She’s been making her return to competition this season and is getting back into elite form. Langfors is the only one of the three with team competition in Miami, last year her team placed 16th in the deepest women’s teams of three field we’ve ever seen. Antonia is actually a past champion at WZA in the individual women’s Rx division (2022), and has three consecutive CrossFit Games team appearances including a career best 6th place this past year with CrossFit Walleye. Their chemistry and understanding for each other is extremely high (as is the case for the next team to be featured), and that can count for quite a bit in team competitions. 

Stronger Than a ’90’s Trend: Kelly Baker, Kelsey Kiel, Emelie Lundberg

Baker is likely the highlight in recent history here after her dramatic qualification for the Games at the West Coast Semifinal in 2023, but Kiel and Lundberg competed at the Games as teammates this past summer as well on team OBA, placing 8th. Kiel and Baker will be competing on the same team at WZA for the 5th time this year. Their first appearance together was all the way in 2016 (which is as far back as I have team data for). Their best finish was 5th in 2018. 

Elite Women’s Team Predictions (Full Field)