By Tommy Marquez
The 15 men Tommy Marquez believes are worth tracking in 2015.
It’s an exciting time for CrossFit athletes and fans of the Sport of Fitness. This weekend, athletes the world over will put themselves to the test in the first workout of the 2015 Reebok CrossFit Games Open.
For many of us, the Open is the beginning and end of our season as competitors, providing five weeks of anticipation, excitement and hard-earned accomplishments. Yet we all can have at least a six-month run as fans of the sport, following top athletes as they put in other-worldly performances on their way to the regionals and the Games.
While you wait for Dave Castro to announce Open Workout 15.1, read about the 15 men (and 15 women) who I believe are worth tracking this season. They range from household names to relatively unknown athletes in the sport.
My top five picks for the 2015 Reebok CrossFit Games.
Mathew Fraser
(North East Region)
Mat Fraser finished a close second at the 2014 Reebok CrossFit Games, with a shade more than a year of CrossFit training under his belt. That sounds eerily similar to another athlete who burst onto the scene in 2010, took second at the Games after only a short stint with CrossFit training before he returned and won the next four years. Yeah, in some ways, Fraser's a lot like Rich Froning.
The former Olympic weightlifter is making big gains; he recently hit PRs on his clean and jerk (375 lb.), snatch (315 lb.), and has won multiple major offseason functional fitness competitions loaded with Games athletes.
Last year, Fraser took seventh in the world in the Open. The future CrossFit Games champion has always finished in the top three in the Open worldwide, so by March 31 we’ll have a clear view as to who we’re looking at in '15.
Watch Fraser compete against Froning at the Live Open Announcement of 15.1 on Thursday, February 26 at 5 p.m. PT on Games.CrossFit.com.
Josh Bridges
(SoCal Region)
The Molotov cocktail of competitive fitness, Josh Bridges could go off at any moment and absolutely demolish the field.
The three-time CrossFit Games competitor excels at every stage of the season. He wins Open, regional and Games events with attention-grabbing decisiveness, whether he's running down the soft sand at the Santa Monica Pier far ahead of the pack in The Beach event at the 2011 Games, demolishing the strict handstand push-ups, front squats and burpees of 2014 Regional Event 4 a full minute and 25 seconds faster than the next best competitor, or beating the rest of the world in Open Workouts 11.4, 11.6, 13.5, and 14.5.
Bridges has won the final Open workout every year he has competed. (He took off 2012 because he was deployed with the Navy.) Last year, he finished the 21-18-15-12-9-6-3 thrusters (95 lb.) and bar-facing burpees of 14.5 in a mind-boggling time of 7 minutes and 49 seconds.
Watching him in the Open this year will be like lighting a long fuse for the illegal firework your crazy uncle got you; sit back and wait for the show.
Noah Ohlsen
(South East)
Noah Ohlsen made quite an impressive debut at the Games last July, wearing the white leader jersey twice that weekend. Although the final two Games events dealt a couple hard blows to his standings, pushing him down to eighth overall, he's indisputably a man to watch.
There’s no shortage of confidence coming from the 23-year-old—and for good reason. I believe he may end up on the CrossFit Games podium at some point in his career.
He enters this season with the weight of heightened expectations, and it will be interesting to see how he handles that pressure.
I expect him to excel in the Open once again. Ohlsen finished in the top 15 worldwide in every 2014 Open workout except 14.1. Expect him to be in the top 10 worldwide this year.
Cole Sager
(North West Region)
Athletes in the newly formed West Regional should get used to chasing Cole Sager.
Four months into his CrossFit training, he took 13th at the 2013 North West Regional. He came back the next year and won it.
With a 17th-place finish at the 2014 Games, Sager proved he has what it takes to finish in the upper half of the field. He’s a straight-up stud and I’m convinced he is only going to improve with time.
He finished 77th worldwide in the Open last year despite a 1,282nd-place finish in 14.3. He dropped a 1 minute, 10 second Grace as the eighth workout of the weekend during an offseason competition earlier this year, which leads me to believe he’s primed to be on Page 1 of our CrossFit Games Update Leaderboard soon.
Having Rory Zambard as a training partner can’t hurt either, right?
Rob Forte
(Australia Region)
2014 was a big year for Rob Forte. He won the Australia Regional for the second consecutive year, and thereby earned his fourth trip to the CrossFit Games. Once in Carson, California, he led the pack in Triple 3 and went on to finish in 12th overall—his best Games finish to date.
Although he is a big name in Australia, he has yet to draw the attention of fans around the world due to middle-of-the-pack Games finishes in 2011 (30th), 2012 (35th) and 2013 (33rd). His talent at the regional level hadn't transferred to the Games yet.
I think his 12th-place finish at the Games last year marked a turning point for Forte. He's fitter than ever and able to perform when it counts.
These guys are back after a year off, and they're going to make their mark on '15.
ZA Anderson
(South East Region)
The last time we saw ZA Anderson compete, he finished 12th in the world in the 2013 Open, first in the South East Regional and 10th at the Games.
He was the hot prospect heading into the 2014 season until he had to withdraw due to a back injury.
He’s looking healthy now—that is if snatching 302 lb., cleaning 355 lb. and regularly posting ridiculous barbell feats in his backyard on his Instagram account (@zaanderson023) is healthy.
Soon we’ll get a good gauge of where he stands by watching his performance in the Open.
Matt Chan
(South West Region)
Despite being unable to compete, 2014 was quite an eventful year for the six-time CrossFit Games competitor.
Initially, a back injury ended Chan’s quest for a seventh trip to the Games. And then on the July 4, 2014, a mountain-biking accident nearly took his life. He landed on his handlebars, partially severing his femoral artery. (Read more in "After the Fall.")
He posted the gruesome results of the crash on social media and has kept his fans dialed in on his recovery. He came to watch the 2014 Reebok CrossFit Games and, inspired by the work of fellow athlete Kevin Ogar, he soon started to train more seriously.
The 37-year-old athlete has hit milestones since the accident that many athletes aspire to, including a 300-lb. snatch. If Chan is able to come back and qualify, it could be one of the most amazing comebacks in CrossFit to date, cementing his status as a CrossFit legend.
Garret Fisher
(South East Region)
The well-coifed 23-year-old athlete became a star in the CrossFit world when he finished in fifth as a rookie at the 2013 Games.
The next spring he failed to qualify. He took fifth in the 2014 Northern California Regional, 18 points behind the final Games qualifier Marcus Filly.
With his celebrity status came the opportunity to train rapper Rick Ross (doing "RossFit") in Miami, Florida. The cross-country travel from his home in Northern California took its toll on Fisher’s training in 2014, but won’t be a factor this season. Fisher has moved to Miami and will be a contender for the Atlantic Regional.
Austin Malleolo
(North East Region)
Austin Malleolo uncharacteristically struggled at regionals last year after winning the North East Regional three years in a row. His 26 points in Event 1 were more than his combined point total at regionals in each of the past three years. Having Malleolo fail to qualify for the Games in 2014 after three years of dominance felt like the end of an era.
I’m not ready to count him out just yet, despite the emergence of Mat Fraser, Craig Kenney, Paul Tremblay, as well as the return of Daniel Tyminski.
Malleolo finished ninth worldwide in the 2014 Open and should have a little more fire in his belly after last year. Assuming he turns in a strong performance in the Open this year, I would be shocked if Malleolo wasn’t vying for one of the top five spots at the East Regional.
Marcus Hendren & Graham Holmberg
(Central East Region)
If I were a betting man—which I am—I would wager that no two male athletes are happier about the new regional format than 2010 Games champion Graham Holmberg and top-10 2013 Games finisher Marcus Hendren. Both sat out of 2014 but would have qualified last year had the new regional format been in place (learn more in "Who Makes the Cut?" by Mike Macpherson).
This year, the Central East will meet North Central at the Central Regional, and compete for five qualifying spots to the CrossFit Games. According to Macpherson's analysis, only one man from North Central would have qualified for the Games over the last three years (Kasperbauer in 2012), had the new regional format been in place. The Central East men are among the world's best and can clean house.
Add Froning's retirement and Kasperbauer's withdrawl from 2015 due to shoulder injury, and 2015 looks mighty fine for top Central East men like Hendren and Holmberg.
You may not know these guys ... yet.
Alex Anderson
(Central East Region)
Get used to hearing the last name "Anderson" thrown around the water cooler. Alex is two years younger than his brother ZA, and they both are the sons of 2011 masters champion Steve Anderson (55-59 Division).
Alex finished eighth in the 2014 Central East Regional, and kept busy over the last few months competing and placing well in offseason competitions.
Like his brother, he can lift heavy. He sports a 305-lb. snatch, 405-lb. clean and 350-lb. overhead squat for a double. But in CrossFit, where weightlifting meets gymnastics and monostructural movements and occasionally asks competitors to go long, Alex sometimes suffers. He finished 23rd in the 50s event, Event 6, at last year's regional.
That said, he hasn't been too shabby in the Open. Last year, he finished third in the Open in the Central East. If his conditioning continues to improve, I believe he will have what it takes to qualify for the Games.
When I want to make myself feel lousy, I go to Alex's Instagram account (@alexanderson29) to see him, ZA and their two youngest brothers Jacob and Sam, exhibit why their family's genetics are vastly superior to my own.
Elijah "EZ" Muhammad
(South East Region)
I was left completely awestruck after watching “EZ” soar to near the top of the rope for each legless climb in Event 5 of the South East Regional last year. (Watch it here.)
He finished in the top 10 in every regional event last year except for one: Event 4. His long arms did him no favors on the strict handstand push-ups. His 39th-place event finish left him with a deficit he couldn’t make up. He finished the weekend in fourth place, one rank and 3 points away from qualifying for the Games.
It’s no secret he loves to go heavy. He’s got a 300-lb. tap-and-go snatch double. The big question for EZ is whether or not classic movements that don't favor big guys—like strict handstand push-ups—will be able to drop him down the leaderboard in 2015. Has he addressed that weakness?
Lorin Adams
(NorCal Region)
My sleeper pick this year in the Northern California Region is firefighter Lorin Adams. He has been quietly creeping his way up the Open and regional leaderboards the past two years.
Adams jumped up the Open standings from 28th in NorCal in 2013 to fifth in 2014. His performances at the regional followed suit as he improved from 17th in 2013 to 10th in 2014.
Adams has spent extensive time this offseason training with Games athlete Margaux Alvarez and coach Alex Cardenas, and has also entered into multiple offseason competitions filled with top athletes and excelled.
Don’t be surprised to see Adams lining up in the final heat alongside Josh Bridges, Dan Bailey, Neil Maddox and the other beasts at the 2015 California Regional.
Jacinto Bonilla
(Masters 60+ Division)
The 75-year-old New Yorker has the distinction of being the oldest competitor ever at the CrossFit Games.
In 2011 and 2012, at 72 and 73, Bonilla qualified for the Games in the 60+ Division by beating athletes more than a decade younger than him.
Bonilla ran his first marathon in the 1960s before many of today's masters competitors were born, earned a black belt in karate and started following CrossFit training in August of 2006 at the age of 67.
This will be his fifth year competing in the CrossFit Games season. I love watching Bonilla because he shows fitness, and even competition, can be a lifelong journey.
Justin Null
(Mid Atlantic Region)
It’s easy to get caught up in the remarkable feats of the top CrossFit competitors. But spend some time scrolling through the Open leaderboard and you'll find an incredible number of athletes who have entered this competition after beginning life-transforming journeys at their CrossFit affiliates.
One of those athletes is Justin Null of CrossFit Tried and True in Muncy, Pennsylvania. When he started CrossFit five months ago he weighed 487 lb. Now he’s down 120 lb. and registered for the Open.
You can follow his Facebook page "Building a New Justin," where you’ll find photos, videos, reflections and tons of inspiration.
