2019 CrossFit Games
2019 CrossFit Games
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2019 CrossFit Games

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2019 CrossFit Games

The 2019 CrossFit Games was the 13th iteration of the annual competition in the sport CrossFit held from August 1–4, 2019, at the Alliant Energy Center in Madison, Wisconsin, United States. The men's competition was won by Mat Fraser, the women's by Tia-Clair Toomey, and CrossFit Mayhem Freedom won the Team competition, all of whom also won the 2018 games.

The 2019 Games operated under a new set of qualification rules this year, allowing athletes to qualify for the Games via three different methods: the Open, the Sanctionals and invitations, replacing the Regionals of previous seasons. It was also the first year to allow a team to be composed of members who did not share a gym affiliation, thereby removing the Affiliate Cup. This year the Games was not broadcast on ESPN or CBS, but rather streamed online by various partners using an open-source broadcast.

This year's Games was the largest yet in the Games' history with the introduction of national champions from 114 countries who can qualify for the Games. The field, however, was quickly reduced to 10 men and 10 women in a series of cuts. Toomey put in a dominant display to win the women's compeitin by 195 points over Kristin Holte. The men's competition was tightly fought between Fraser and Noah Ohlsen, with Ohlsen leading in many events and Fraser only pulling ahead to win in the final two events. Fraser's fourth consecutive win equaled Rich Froning Jr.'s record, while Toomey's win was the first time a woman has achieved three consecutive wins.

For this season, the Games qualification procedures were overhauled. For the first year since 2008, the CrossFit Games no longer hosted a regional qualifier and instead sanctioned independently run events around the world. The events were trademarked as "Sanctionals" by CrossFit, and were used to qualify participants in the Men, Women, and Team divisions for the 2019 Games. In previous years the CrossFit Open was used to determine which athletes and teams qualified for the Regionals. In 2019, each Sanctional was either by invitation or through its own open qualification process. The CrossFit Open still occurred, but was used to qualify directly to the Games. Team rules were also changed so that members no longer needed to be from the same CrossFit affiliate and a team can be composed of the best athletes from different affiliates (hence dubbed the "superteam"), there was therefore also no Affiliate Cup which was awarded to an affiliate in previous year.

Individual athletes qualified for the 2019 CrossFit Games in one of four ways by order of precedence: becoming a national champion in the 2019 CrossFit Open, finishing in the top 20 men or women worldwide in the Open, winning a Sanctionals event, or by select invitation at the Games' discretion.

The first set of qualified athletes were the men or women who finished top 20 worldwide in the Open, as well as the top-ranked man and woman in the Open from each country with at least one CrossFit affiliate in good standing, and who had completed each Open workout as written in the Rx'd (prescribed) category after video review. 357,000 athletes registered for the Open, a drop of 14% from the 2018 Games. The Open took place over five weeks starting on February 21; after the Open was completed, a total of 123 men and 117 women qualified for the Games as national champions pending final review. After the national champions were determined, the next 20 overall male and female worldwide finishers in the Open qualified for the Games. Mat Fraser and Sara Sigmundsdóttir were the overall winners of the Open.

The 2019 Sanctionals consisted of 15 sanctioned events that took place between December 2018 and June 2019. The events were the Dubai CrossFit Championship (Dubai), Australian CrossFit Championship (Broadbeach), Wodapalooza (Miami), CrossFit Fittest in Cape Town, CrossFit Strength in Depth (London), Asia CrossFit Championship (Shanghai), Mid-Atlantic CrossFit Challenge (Baltimore), CrossFit Italian Showdown (Milan), Brazil CrossFit Championship (São Paulo), CrossFit Lowlands Throwdown (Apeldoorn), Down Under CrossFit Championship (Wollongong), Reykjavik CrossFit Championship (Reykjavík), Rogue Invitational (Columbus, Ohio), CrossFit French Throwdown (Paris), and the Granite Games (St. Cloud, Minnesota).

Unlike the Regionals of previous years where the events were standardised, each Sanctional devised its own separate workouts, which may vary in number from six to twelve workouts. The male, female, and team winners of each of the events qualified for the Games and if a Sanctionals event winner has previously qualified for the 2019 CrossFit Games, the qualifying place for that competition would be awarded to the next highest finisher who has yet to qualify for the games.

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