Salo won the CrossFit Games in 2009 and finished fifth in 2010. The next year, he ruptured his eardrum during the ocean swim of the first Games event, and he was forced to withdraw. Six months later, he required knee surgery that took him out of contention for 2012. The stoic Finn missed competition but took the setbacks in stride.

“That’s just life. Something always happens,” he says. “And sometimes they are like good things, sometimes they are bad things. But it’s inevitable.”

Right now, the man who finished second at the Europe Regional is focused on one thing: “My goal at the moment is to show myself that … I’m able to fight for the fittest man of the world title.”

Video by Gary Roberts.