Grade: Honorary Ph.D.
Samantha Briggs
Sam Briggs has made a career out of accomplishing ridiculous feats, but this one might take the cake.
A few days before the Age Group Online Qualifier workouts were announced, Briggs fractured her elbow joint and ruptured the medial collateral ligament as well.
The injury required surgery and would effectively end Briggs’ hopes of competing at Regionals and returning to the Games as an individual.
For any other human the equation is fairly simple: Elbow Injury + Surgery = See you in 2019.
For Sam Briggs, who my colleague Sean Woodland maintains is a terminator sent back in time to kill Sarah Connor and just decided to stick around and try CrossFit, the equation has a couple more pieces to it.
The equation for Briggs looks like: (Elbow Injury + All 4 Workouts Completed at Once + Qualify Second in the World in Your Age Division) x Elbow Surgery = See You in Madison in August.
I wish I could say this is the first time Briggs has qualified for the Games with a notable injury, but amazingly, she finished second at the Atlantic Regional back in 2015 with a broken foot.
The more I think about it, the more I think Sean Woodland might be right about Sam Briggs, and this might be the only grade fitting for such an amazing athlete.
Grade: A+
Tudor Magda
You can’t beat perfect, and perfect is what Tudor Magda was in the Qualifier in the Teenage Boys 14-15 Division.
Magda won all four workouts in his division, and along with finishing first in the Open, he had the lowest possible score (5) for an athlete in this format.
He has been dominant in 2018 across the board. During the Open, he won three of the six workouts, meaning he’s won seven of the 10 workouts so far this season.
His most impressive singular performance came in Workout 3, where he beat the next best athlete by over 100 reps and was the only 14-15-year-old athlete to finish 2 full rounds.
A 70-percent win rate for workouts is insane, and Magda is far and away the frontrunner for the title in Madison.
Even still, Magda isn’t a shoo-in to stand atop the podium this August.
Last year after a strong third-place performance in the Qualifier, he regressed at the Games and fell to ninth place behind two athletes who’ll be accompanying him to the Games again in 2018.
Christian Gallagher (fifth), and Nolan Pedrick (seventh) both bested Magda at the Games after finishing below him in the Qualifier last year.
Magda’s performance thus far points towards history not repeating itself again, and for now earns him a top grade.
Patty Failla
In the 2017 Online Qualifier, Patty Failla set the record for the lowest point total by any athlete with just 7 points in the Women 60+ Division.
She did so with three first-place finishes in workouts, one third place, and a first-place finish in the Open.
In 2018 she did one better by finishing the Qualifier with just 6 points, trading her lone third-place finish up for second place.
If it weren’t for the previously mentioned performance by Tudor Magda, she’d still hold the record for lowest point total ever in the Qualifier.
Still, a near flawless run through the Open and Qualifier for Failla is nothing to shake a stick at.
Including her title at the Games last year, Failla has now won five consecutive stages of the competition in the Women 60+ Division, and how she’s done it is staggering.
In 27 scored events during that span, she’s won 16 of them. Take it a step further and 24 of the 27 were in the top three. She’s only had two events outside of the top five, both seventh-place finishes, which brings her average finish to 2.11, or in real placement terms, second place.
For reference, during his record-setting run at the Games, Mat Fraser averaged a fourth-place finish overall.
This means Failla has bested what Fraser accomplished at the Games by an average of two placings—for nearly two seasons!
That’s A+ material in my book.
Lynne Knapman
In the halls of sporting greatness, there are two statistical areas that are held in the highest regard: winning and longevity.
Cal Ripken Jr. (MLB) and Brett Favre’s (NFL) “Ironman” streaks of consecutive games played in their sports are considered by many to be some of the most unbreakable and impressive records in sports history.
Last year the allure of Becca Voigt’s potential 10th consecutive CrossFit Games as an individual competitor was one of the biggest storylines in a talent-heavy women’s field.
In the master’s competition, Lynne Knapman is the gold standard of longevity. After last week’s qualifier, she’s now earned a trip to her ninth consecutive CrossFit Games.
She has earned the distinction of being the only athlete to have competed at every single masters competition at the CrossFit Games.
When Knapman first competed at the Games in Carson in 2010, there was only one masters division, with 14 athletes and three events. Since then, the competition has evolved significantly as a result of changes to format, programming and the number of divisions (there are now six).
Knapman has stood strong through it all, and there is no question she’s worthy of the highest grade.
Grade: B
Phillip Kniep
Records are made to be broken.
Tiago Lopes’ record comeback in 2017, when he went from 74th place in the Open to 19th in the Online Qualifier, lasted only a year.
Two-time Individual Games competitor Phillip Kniep clawed his way back from a 92nd-place finish in the Open in the Mens 35-39 Division to qualify for the Games with a 17th-place overall finish after the Qualifier.
I stated during an Inside the Leaderboard segment (shameless plug) before the Qualifier that based on Lopes’ average finish in each workout in 2017, a larger comeback in the Qualifier wasn't out of the question.
Kniep took that to heart and made up a whopping 75 spots on the leaderboard following an average finish of 19th in the four Qualifier workouts.
He now has a clean slate for Madison, and hopefully he’ll improve his overall standing once again. But just earning a spot there in the first place is a huge accomplishment.
Normally a record-breaking performance would be worth a top grade, but he still dug himself a hole in the Open to begin with, so instead he gets a solid B.
Grade: C+
Jeff Fotti
A strong performance in the Open doesn’t guarantee the same success going forward. Jeff Fotti got a dose of that reality in the Qualifier this year.
Fotti won the Open in the Mens 40-44 Division following a trio of top three finishes, and he finished five of the six workouts in the top 10.
The Qualifier workouts provided a much different outcome as his average finish across all four was a 33rd, and he had just one finish inside the top 15.
He dropped to 13th overall and still safely qualified, but pending further explanation, his performance in the Qualifier draws some red flags about his podium chances in Madison.
Winning the Open immediately puts a target on your back, and the Men 40-44 Division is talented at the top.
Athletes like Neal Maddox and Sean Ramirez are used to the big stage at the Games and have proven their ability to perform on gameday, leaving very little room for mistakes from their competitors.
Fotti still qualified for the CrossFit Games after finishing 78th last year in this division in the Qualifier, a feat that should be celebrated.
However, the programming is only going to get more aggressive, which doesn’t bode well for Fotti, who experienced a downturn after the first step up in the difficulty.
He’s earned a C+, which is passing but still leaves room for improvement
Alexia Fineman
If you have a significant hole in your fitness, at some point, Dave Castro and the programming powers that be will expose it.
The resulting slide down the leaderboard will vary from person to person. Thankfully for Alexia Fineman, it didn’t cost her a trip to the CrossFit Games in the Women 50-54 Division.
She finished Workout 3 of the Qualifier in 102nd place largely due to only managing 30 of the first 50 feet of handstand walking in the workout.
The workout was a 20-minute AMRAP, and she got to the first handstand walk portion in 3:08, meaning it took her the remaining 16:52 just to make it those 30 feet.
There was handstand walking in the Open as well this year, and Fineman was unable to perform any, but really she didn’t need to. Even without recording any lengths of the handstand walk in 18.4, her score was good enough for 36th worldwide in her division.
Fineman qualified for the Games last year in the same division and finished in a respectable seventh place in Madison. However, she wasn’t required to walk on her hands at all in 2017.
She’s clearly very capable, having finished the Open in fourth in her division and notching a pair of top-10 finishes in the Qualifier. It was enough to keep her in 20th place and get her back to Madison.
Being the only athlete in the top 50 who didn’t finish a full 50 feet of handstand walking is cause for concern, and it’s something I’m sure she’ll work on going forward, but for now it gets her a middle of the road grade.
Grade: DNF
Dustin McWilliams
This is a particularly frustrating grade to give because it has little to do with ability and is based instead on a technicality.
Dustin McWilliams’ season is ending sooner than it could have due to him not submitting a score for Workout 3 before the deadline.
It’s a disappointing development for McWilliams, who had podium hopes at the Games and finished the Open in fourth place in the Men 35-39 Division.
Last year in Madison, McWilliams impressively finished in fourth overall. It’s even more impressive when you consider that the three athletes ahead of him were named Kyle Kasperbauer, Neal Maddox and Chris Spealler.
McWilliams’ chances of cracking the top three looked promising after Maddox aged up into the 40-44 Division and Spealler sat the Qualifier out.
A strong Open finish, along with top-5 finishes in Workouts 1 and 4, would have been more than enough to get McWilliams to the Games even if with a relatively mediocre finish in Workout 3.
Even still, he finished 27th overall, just 32 points back from 20th, but it’s a paltry consolation given what could have been.
The best written paper in the world is still a zero if you don’t turn it in on time, so let this be a lesson to play it safe and get your scores in early.
