The 33-year-old will make her seventh appearance at the CrossFit Games.
Host of the “CrossFit Games Update” Pat Sherwood dubbed Becca Voigt the Swiss Army knife of CrossFit. No matter the task, Voigt has shown again and again she has the tools necessary to get work done.
The 33-year-old will make her seventh appearance at the CrossFit Games. Jason Khalipa and Chris Spealler are the only other two athletes to share this distinction. Spealler competed in the inaugural Games in 2007, and missed 2013, while Khalipa and Voigt have competed every year since 2008.
2008: The Woodstock of Fitness
“This was my first year competing at the CrossFit Games … at The Ranch in Aromas, I felt like this was the Woodstock of fitness,” Voigt remembered. “We all gathered on the hill and hung out in the dirt. The music was loud. People camped there, too.”
Affiliates and CrossFitters from across the United States gathered, excited about the possibility of competing and hanging out with others equally obsessed with CrossFit. The inaugural CrossFit Games were advertised with a simple flier on CrossFit.com, and 70 athletes signed up to compete, and afterward, word quickly spread. By the summer of 2008, the Games roster had grown to more than 300 competitors and 800 fans filled the hillside.
At the time a 26-year-old banker from Southern California, Voigt was one of the 300 who signed up to compete. Over a couple days, she did four events, which felt like extreme volume at the time. One of the toughest events was Fran with chest-to-bar pull-ups.
“At that time it was such a scary workout. It was a lot of chest-to-bar pull-ups. I don’t think I had done that many before,” Voigt recalled. “I tore my hands … and there was blood everywhere!”
Despite the tear, she finished the weekend in seventh overall and wanted more.
“It was so much fun,” she said. “The camaraderie among the athletes made it feel like a team event. The experience ignited a spark inside me. I wanted to compete more after that.”
2009: Proving Herself
Because so many people wanted to compete, CrossFit instituted a qualifying stage for the 2009 Games: regionals.
Voigt easily made it through despite a couple of surgeries, but felt nervous as she drove north to Aromas.
“I had had surgeries before, but these were my first as a CrossFitter, so this was a proving ground for me. Post-surgery I had to show myself that I still had it and could hang with the girls,” Voigt said, referring to surgeries for burst bursa in her knee and a staph infection.
With five events on the first day, and three events on the second day, the 2009 CrossFit Games demanded far more from the competitors than the last two years combined.
“This was the last Games in Aromas and my worst finish,” she said. “I got 20th that year, and when I try to remember what happened a few things come to mind … surgery, the Deadlift Ladder and the Sandbag Sprint.”
“I was afraid that my surgeries would have a negative effect on my performance. They really didn’t, but the stress about it played with me mentally,” she explained.
It didn’t help the first event was a 7-km hill run through areas so steep and unstable competitors had to crawl on all fours. Competitors finished the event completely spent; Jason Khalipa and Val Voboril collapsed near the finish line, and needed medical assistance.
Voigt finished the trail run in 48:57—just more than 7 minutes after the event winner Sarah Dunsmore. The finish was good enough for 27th out of 70 competitors.
Not long after the run, competitors worked through the Deadlift Ladder. The women arrived to see barbells lined up with incrementally heavier weights, starting with 185 lb. and ending at 375 lb. Athletes had to climb the ladder, lifting the barbell and advancing to the next one every 30 seconds until they failed.
While Voigt maxed out at 275 lb., 31 women went on to lift 295 lb. or more. Twenty-one women lifted more than 300 lb.—including 2011 and 2012 Games champ Annie Thorisdottir, 2009 champ Tanya Wagner and 2010 champ Kristan Clever—and one woman, Cyndi Frieling, finished the ladder with a 375-lb. deadlift. Voigt’s name plummeted to 32nd place on the event, further burying her in the overall standings.
“That is crazy to look back on because now I can lift 395 lb.,” Voigt said.
The final nail in Voigt’s coffin was the 170-m sprint up one of the steepest hills with a 35-lb. sandbag. While Thorisdottir sprinted the hill in 1:07.4, Voigt reached the finish line in 1:29.6 for 52nd place.
“I remember the sandbag sprint up the hill was terrible,” she said. “It was so unbelievably uncomfortable. It was short, and the bag wasn’t very heavy, but it was absolutely killing people. It hurt me, too. It did not necessarily hurt my knee, it was just hard. It made me see that I still had miles to go (with training) before the next season.”
2010: Moving to Carson
After leaving The Ranch in Aromas, the Games were held at the Home Depot Center (now StubHub Center) in Carson, California, in 2010. Athletes had to go through two qualifying rounds—sectionals and regionals—in order to make it to the Games.
“Throughout the whole weekend we were all thinking about how far we had come since The Ranch … looking back on that though, it was still so small,” Voigt said.
The 6,000-seat tennis stadium felt massive for the athletes and fans that were accustomed to little more than a dusty hillside and some camping chairs. On Friday night, the first event was announced as the athletes waited under the stadium lights. CrossFit Games Director Dave Castro played a video tribute to 2009 CrossFit Games competitor Amanda Miller who died of skin cancer earlier that spring, before explaining the athletes would complete a couplet of 9, 7 and 5 squat snatches and ring muscle-ups in her name.
“I vividly remember the first event, Amanda,” Voigt said. “We were standing under the lights and the stands were quite empty. I ... remember what I was wearing and how bad my form was. It was so exciting and emotional.”
Over the next couple days, Voigt went through eight more events, most of which were announced at the last second. She handled the austere conditions in the athlete areas without complaint, and didn’t mind learning the events moments before walking onto the competition floor.
Not long before Rich Froning literally fell from first to second place overall, Voigt relished the announcement of rope climbs in the final event.
“It was the first time we had rope climbs in competition and a lot of people were failing dangerously and not finishing the event,” Voigt recalled. “Before my final climb in the event, Dave Castro whispered in my ear that if I finished, I’d be the first woman to accomplish that. I was so encouraged by that and I gave it all I had, but I didn’t finish. It didn’t matter, it was still a great accomplishment!”
Voigt succeeded in staying in the upper-half of the field on all nine events, ranging from third to 17th out of 41 competitors, which was good enough to earn her seventh overall once again. But this year wasn’t really about her.
“The best part was seeing my training partner Kris Clever win the Games,” Voigt said.
Clever dominated the 2010 CrossFit Games with five event wins and three second-place finishes. The only anomaly was a 20th-place finish on the sandbag move up and over the stadium wall, which didn’t play well for the 5-foot tall athlete. She took 20th place on that event, but even then no one could catch her.
The women’s competition now had a dominant competitor, and a new young challenger. With a full stadium to match, it was clear in 2010 the Games were on track to grow quickly.
“I had a feeling that the sport had become professional,” Voigt said.
2011: A Dizzying Experience
Reebok became the title sponsor of the CrossFit Games in 2011, and for the first time the athletes walked into the stadium wearing gear designed for the young sport.
But by no means were those the biggest changes. An ocean swim at the Santa Monica Pier, skills tests like handstand walking and softball throws, a massive structure called the Killer Kage athletes swung through like children on the monkey bars, and compact but heavily loaded dog sleds challenged the competitors.
It all went by in a blur for Voigt.
“Though this was my best finish in the Games, this year is a blur because I had vertigo almost the entire weekend,” she explained. “Many times when I was moving the world was spinning.”
“It was not a fun Games for me because I had to deal with this, but ironically I finished the highest I ever have,” she continued. “I think my finish was due to the amount of focus I had to put on myself to just survive and get through the weekend.”
When Voigt got off the GHD to begin the sprint in Triplet Sprint on Saturday afternoon, she stumbled and fell to the grass before she picked herself up and kept going.
“Right before the last workout I almost pulled out,” she recalled. “Fortunately, that was the first year they had chiropractors at the Games for the athletes. I wouldn’t have been able to get through it if it weren’t for the chiropractor, Dr. McAlees. I’m glad I stuck in there because I made the podium that year.”
She shared the podium with Clever and Thorisdottir.
2012: A Test of Endurance
When the first event of the 2012 Reebok CrossFit Games was announced at an athlete dinner on Monday night most of the competitors were in shock.
The athletes would begin with a 700-m ocean swim, 8-km mountain bike ride on a single-speed bike, and an 11-km run over Microwave Mountain at Camp Pendleton.
To make things worse, the event was broken into two 100-point parts. They would be timed through the swim, bike, and first 150 m of the run for Pendleton 1, and again once they completed all of the work for Pendleton 2.
“This was the second year they made us do a triathlon, but it was so much scarier than the triathlon the year before,” she said of the long endurance events. “I remember that I was so nervous when they announced the event on Monday night … I went home. I was nervous about the whole thing. I had to go home to just relax and get mentally ready.”
The next day the athletes met with Marines to learn how to safely navigate the course. Since it’s an active Marine base, the competitors could encounter unexploded devices or one of the many rattlesnakes that fill the Southern California hillsides.
Before sunrise on Wednesday morning, Voigt loaded the bus to Pendleton. The whole experience was like the worst version of boot camp, straight out of the movies.
“There were Marines along the whole trail,” Voigt recalled. “If you asked them about where you were at, they always said that you were almost done even if you weren’t! When I finally saw the finish line I thought it was close, but it was still so far away. When we were done, people were completely destroyed. It was tough.”
2013: Getting Caught Up
“There were a lot of events I liked; there was a lot of creative programming, but last year was just not an overall good experience for me,” Voigt said of the 2013 Games. “I was too caught up in trying to win. I let the standings control my feelings. And that turned out to be bad for me.”
She got off to a rough start in The Pool with a 24th-place finish on the 10 rounds of 3 bar muscle-ups sandwiched between 25-yard swims.
“Simply put, I found out that I needed to work on swimming more,” she said.
From there on out, she tended to finish the events in the teens to 20s with only three exceptions: the Burden Run (seventh), Cinco 1 (seventh) and Cinco 2 (fourth).
2014: Re-focused
Fresh off of a second-place finish at the incredibly competitive 2014 Southern California Regional, Voigt is mentally preparing for her seventh Games.
“Because of my experience at the Games last year, I’ve become a better athlete,” Voigt said. “This year I haven’t looked at the scoreboards, and I won’t. I’ll focus on what I can control, not what I can’t.”