Week Five in Review: Latin America

April 8, 2013

Thomas Patton

Nothing is more classic CrossFit than a couplet of thrusters and pull-ups.
 

Nothing is more classic CrossFit than a couplet of thrusters and pull-ups, and the Latin America Region was expecting nothing too far from that for 13.5. We were ready for it … sort of.

As if to prove that Latin American men can also hang with the top in our sport, 49 men passed the four-minute threshold to the second set of four minutes.

Men

Impressive as always was Orlando Trejo with 175 reps, which was only five reps shy of being able to reach the third set of four minutes. Those 175 reps on 13.5 allowed Trejo a 33rd-place finish worldwide for this workout and an overall finish of 47th worldwide at the end of the 2013 Open.

Second for men on 13.5 was somewhat unknown Hernando Jose Guerrero from CrossFit Santa Marta in Colombia with 153 reps. And at third place is also relatively new David de Jesus Espinosa, scoring 152 reps. These scores had not yet been validated at the time of this report, but both these athletes had shown consistently good scores on the past four workouts and sat at 58th and 109th coming into 13.5. After their amazing grasp of thrusters and chest-to-bar pull-ups, these two men were able to move up to 41st and 82nd place.

Juan Cruz Sartori from CrossFit Argos in Argentina took fourth place on 13.5 with 146 reps, followed by Paolo Eras from Ecuador with 145 who came in to 13.5 in 67th place and now sits at 50th, very close to a possibility for those additional invites.

Giancarlo Vera Ochoa, who finished second at last year’s Regional, took sixth place with 144 reps on 13.5 and finished the 2013 Open with spot 17 on the Leaderboard.

Overall, the scores on 13.5 caused very little shift on the Men’s Leaderboard, at least for the top spots. Trejo took had five first-place finishes, followed almost consistently by Rodrigo Valenzuela and Kevin Vega. The next spots are all names we have grown accustomed to reading about in the past weeks, such as Sebastian Stange, Luis Perez (who is the only Latin American in the top spots submitting his scores by video), Conor Murphy, Matthew Barnett, Sartori, Batuque Iribarren and Tarcio Santos rounding out the top 10.

Women

Thrusters and pull-ups proved a little more difficult for the women of our region, or at least getting 90 reps under four minutes. The only female athlete in Latin America to go into the second four-minute set was Ana C. Caldas who managed 122 reps. Caldas has had amazing finishes on each Open workout, such as first, 11th, third, first and first, enough to remain top three throughout the 2013 Open among females in our region.

Tarasa Barnett, our 2011 and 2012 female Games athlete, finished second in 13.5, just one-rep shy of working herself into the second set of four minutes. Barnett finishes the Open in third place after some consistent top wins on all workouts in the 2013 Open, reinforcing why she has been the No. 1 female in our region these past few years.

Wanda Brenton took third place on 13.5 with 88 reps, allowing her to remain in first place at the end of the Open for Latin American women.

The chest-to-bar Fran did allow some new female names to get into the top 10 for the workout, such as Débora Diegas Diegas from Brazil, Laura Diez and Janet Bonilla from Mexico, and Marcela Fernanda Rozo from Colombia, who we profiled as a darkhorse, and now finishes the Open in 29th place.

Courtney Modecki, a coach at CrossFit Medellin, finishes the Open in fourth place. Itzel Cadena follows her in fifth, while Solange Jean-Francois Mon of Panama takes sixth. Jenn Chailler and Marion Ingrassia take seventh and eighth, respectively, and Marilyn Rojas and Schmarrah McCarthy finish the Open tied for ninth.

Team

CrossFit 7 Mile always led the Team Division and finished the Open in first place as expected, but a first-place finish in 13.5 for CrossFit Guayaquil helps them steal the second-place position from CrossFit Cayman, now in third.

Wodbox and TTC Panama close the top five in teams. Some other teams in the top 10 are looking to maintain control over those top 30 teams in Guayaquil are CrossFit Imperio from Peru, CrossFit SP from Brazil, CrossFit PTY from Panama, CrossFit St. Thomas and Maori CrossFit from Ecuador.