World Fitness Project 2025: Contracted Women Power Rankings

Image Credit: Athlete’s Eye Photography

If you missed the 2025 Power Rankings for the men, make sure to check it out, here’s the intro repeated in case you don’t care about the men’s field:

The roster of all signed pros for the inaugural World Fitness Project (WFP) season has been out for just over a month now. It consists of 20 male and 20 female athletes, at least 80% of which are in the top 20 worldwide based on any ranking metric you want to go by. 

With three opportunities to compete throughout this year, and a host of challengers clamoring for their right to do so as well via the qualifiers, it’s going to be quite a competitive season. 

These articles (this one for the women, and a separate one for the men) are my best effort to project rankings for the signed athletes (with the understanding of course that there will be qualifiers who outperform some of them too). 

Factors in Play

For the sake of not repeating some these many times throughout the individual athlete write ups, there are a few consistent things I’ve applied to the rankings: 

• Number of competitions each athlete appears to be doing this year
• Their age relative to the number of competitions they’re choosing to do
• Where they appear to be prioritizing their mental/emotional focus this year
• Recent competition performances, or lack there of in some cases

Therefore, in some instances this is not necessarily a reflection of who I think is fittest amongst them. Rather, it is a projection of how well I expect them to do in the three WFP events and ultimately their potential to earn a pro card for the WFP season in 2026.

The Favorite

1. Laura Horvath: Similarly to the men’s field, I believe there is one clear favorite amongst the signed athletes. Unlike Jeff Adler, however, Laura has been beaten recently, taking second place to someone else in this field, in one of the most unexpected wins I can ever remember last month at TYR Wodapalooza Miami. Aside from that second place finish to Lucy Campbell though, when Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr is not in the field, Laura is the favorite at every competition she shows up to. Recently, Gabi Migała did appear to be threatening that, but due to her injury at the Rogue Invitational, we miss out on two of the three podium favorites when it comes to a general thought about the “Fittest Women” in the world.

Podium Threats

Because of the absence of Toomey and Migała, the conversation for the podium threats is as deep, if not deeper than the men’s field. As a spoiler, there is a woman in this field who has recently podiumed in an elite competition who isn’t even ranked in the top-10, let’s dive in: 

2. Lucy Campbell: What we saw in Miami can not be ignored. And usually I am cautious about seeing one impressive thing before making a big claim about an athlete (at least I have been since Jayson Hopper confused me in 2021 by annihilating a live Semifinal, and then taking three years to find that level of performance and achievement again). 

Lucy’s road back to competition since her rookie year at the Games in 2022 has been arduous to say the least. But what really matters is that three big hurdles in her comeback were each individually and uniquely tested at TYR WZA. Ring muscle ups, heavy cleans (front rack), and handstand walking showed up in three separate events of the six scoring opportunities she had. 

On the leaderboard, her heavy lifting result was bad (and yet if you watched her you could tell how big of a win it was for her). Despite that “bad” finish, she won the competition. Beating Horvath, and several other athletes on this list. 

The question is not if Lucy is good or not, it’s how good can she be? Here’s to hoping there are no other setbacks and we get the answer to that this year. I, for one, think she has a potential we don’t often see and expect her to be a final heat staple throughout the season. 

3. Alexis Raptis: She’s been a staple in the top-ten, but absent from significant podiums, until recently, in Miami at TYR WZA and the stacked Syndicate Crown Semifinal. While others who could occupy have some areas of doubt, Raptis seems to be in just a good space outside the gym as in, and may just be entering into her best season yet.

4-7. Arielle Loewen, Emma Tall, Brooke Wells, Danielle Brandon

I must have moved six women in and out of these spots a dozen times in a week as I kept evaluating the pros and cons for each athlete. 

• Loewen has the most impressive recent finishes (3rd – 2023 CrossFit Games, 3rd – 2024 Rogue Invitational) and I think we can ignore TYR WZA for now. 
• Emma Tall was arguably a couple no reps away from a podium finish in Miami and placed sixth at Rogue after being relatively close to Migała at the Euro Semifinal. She looks as good as she ever has right now.
• I think we would do better to notice how well Brooke did at Rogue than anything else. It still isn’t clear how fit she actually is relative to the other women on this list, but my instinct tells me she’s more towards the top than the bottom of this group
• Between placing seventh at the Games against a diluted field, and 11th at Rogue, I still just see “DB” as a back end of the top-10 athlete in this field of women. It does seem like strength and health are trending in the right direction, I still feel like we’ve never actually known how good she can be; I hope one day we find that out.

8-9. Alex Gazan, Emma Lawson

These two would have been three and four on this list if not for the unknown injuries surrounding them. Both women reduced the footprint of their competition experience in Miami prior to the competition. Gazan is just now squat snatching for the first time in a long time, and Lawson recently cited injury as a reason she isn’t doing the CrossFit Open. 

In general, that means a more focused season with less drama, confusion, and competition for Lawson. The decision to do less at TYR WZA paid off as her team went on to win the team competition. If this is nothing more than another wise choice by her, then I’d move her all the way of to number three.

Next Up

10-11. Bethany Flores, Emily Rolfe

With 12 Games appearances between them since 2017, they are nearly staples at the Games, and they both are coming off their best finishes by a significant margin having taken 3rd and 4th respectively there. Rolfe has competed twice since then and dropped back towards 10th at TYR WZA, a more normal finishing position for her against the best women’s fields we’ve seen. Flores has taken this time off from competition. 

Flores is extremely intriguing to me, many have thought she peaked prior to the 2021 Games and was robbed of a podium run that year. Although she’s been consistent and impressive since then, she’s done it while seemingly always having some sort of injury or limitation. There’s no question she is fit, talented, and a ferocious competitor. But similarly to DB, I’m not sure we’ve ever seen her best form, and I don’t know at this point if we ever will. Despite that, she has top-ten potential.

12. Maddie Sturt: I think a lot of people got glimpses at Rogue of how good Sturt actually is. She’s still only 28 years old, and has a ton of competition experience. She is in a great training environment and team, but I think all the Aussies are doing both seasons this year, and therefore I don’t see them as genuine threats in this field; instead they are more likely to have career-best finishes at the Games. 

13-15. Haley Adams, Paige Semenza, Sydney Wells

There doesn’t seem to be too much between these three women at this point, and again it was very hard to sort them amongst each other. 

• Adams is clearly back to enjoying being a part of this sport and she did have a fifth place at the Games, so we see the old potential there. At Rogue, however, she was unable to regain the level of performances we’ve seen from her at that competition previously. Overall I’d say the jury is still out of how good the renewed Haley Adams is.
• Semenza seemed to finally get the recognition some have thought she’s deserved after taking ninth at the Games. She regressed back to 13th at Rogue, after being 14th there the year before, and both of those fields were more suitable to the strength of what we see here with the WFP roster.
• Sydney is continuing to improve in some of the areas which were initially weaknesses for her; so we must add her name to the growing list of women in this field who are on an upward trajectory.

Something to Prove

16. Aimee Cringle: It was a breakout year for Cringle, starting with a rather impressive fifth place finish at the European Semifinal. Six of the top 10 women at the Semifinal are not in this field, Cringle is one of the European women who will be eager to show their class against a predominantly North American field (at least as far as the signed athletes are concerned).

17-18. Dani Speegle, Olivia Kerstetter

Both women were added to the signed roster following TYR WZA earlier this year. 

After withdrawing from the Games, Speegle has had a rather nice offseason taking seventh at Rogue and sixth at WZA, certainly showing her class as far as being amongst this prestigious group of women. 

Kerstetter had a relatively quiet offseason, with the only competition of note being Crash Crucible where she took sixth place against a field that doesn’t include a single athlete on the signed roster for WFP. She does have some insane home run potential (see the final event from semis last year), and when you can hit one out of the park it helps an awful lot in the grand scheme of a competition. 

19. Manon Angonese: Angonese is an interesting athlete on this list. She has excelled through the qualifier and subsequently at the Rogue Invitational in a more impressive way than she has at other competitions. Since the WFP considered Rogue’s ranking for their invites, she finds herself on this roster. She has qualified each of the last three years and has finished 11th, 10th, and ninth respectively improving each year. She has not shown the same consistency in the Games seasons over the last four years, leaving us with limited data points against the North American women. If the programming for WFP ends up being more inline with Rogue’s style, that should bode well for her though.

20. Emma McQuaid: Similarly to Angonese, it is likely the Rogue rankings that earned McQuaid a spot on this roster, though her trajectory there has been the opposite of Angonese with subsequently worse finishes year-after-year. She has also shown a negative trajectory at both the Semifinal and Games level since 2022. She has put together a consistent run that can’t be ignored of, six consecutive Games qualifications, but similarly to BKG on the men’s side, the backwards trend of finishes at high level competitions sees her rounding out the bottom of this list.