Did CrossFit Quarterfinals do a Good Job Sorting Athletes Into Semifinals?
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- Опубліковано 22 вер 2024
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In this clip from episode 124 of the Corpus Animus Podcast, TTT Coaches Max El-Hag and Brannen Dorman give their opinions on if the 2023 CrossFit Quarterfinals did a good job of getting the best athletes to advance to the Semifinals.
For the rest of the episode check out the other clips on UA-cam or listen to the full episode on all major podcast providers.
As someone who rows a 7:30 2k (where most games athletes are under 6:30) and was still on the cusp of qualifying numbers for semis, I agree that this quarterfinals was heavily weighted to strength and gymnastics and not your engine.
It would be easy for HQ to justify the current methodology. It's also very easy to poke holes in the current system depending on what the stated goals are. Eg: If the goal is for the 300 SF qualifiers to be the top 300 CrossFitters in the world, then the system completely fails (and there's no point in having separate regions in this scenario). But think about the Olympics as a model: drawing from various regions/nations is part of the process, which keeps it a global event. And the gold medal winner is accepted as the world champion by everyone. That doesn’t mean the 25 runners who qualify for the Olympic 10k are the 25 best in the world. The field of 25 contains the legitimate contenders to be best in the world, but a max of 3 from any given country, and each of them had to meet the minimum qualifying standards. Outside of the Olympics, Track & Field as a sport also maintains a ranking system which declares who the top 25 are, even if they weren’t at the Olympics.
CrossFit could easily use the same explanation: “All semifinals are not equal, and the 300 semifinalists are not deemed to be the 300 best CrossFitters in the world. But CrossFit is a global sport. We draw the Games field from around the world, and we make sure that the Games field contains the few who can legitimately contend to win the Games." The WW ranking and SF quota system then fits beautifully into this narrative - "we WILL draw the Games field from all over the world, but proportions from each region will be adjusted to ensure that the top contenders are present in that field".
Not saying this is the best way to do it… but if they would clearly explain it this way, then it’s hard to argue with the logic. Makes complete sense that the organization wants to foster expansion and growth around the world, and still try to find the very best few at the top of the sport each year. This explanation is obviously the most painful for bubble athletes, who want to see that advancing to SF from anywhere is relatively equivalent - because they're measuring their own performance and accomplishments by that outcome. But there's no perfect system: you keep it regionally aligned, openly own the reasons for doing that, and accept that the regions are not equivalent... or you get rid of the regional system, make all decisions purely by worldwide rankings, and you advance the top 300 worldwide into the next stage. Either one is easy to explain if they would just be clear about it.
Bro no one is gonna read all this lol
Totally agree with your post. It’s not about the top 40 being the top 40. They only claim that they’ll find the fittest.
The argument for athlete seeding is different depending on your point of view. From a top-down business perspective, growing the sport and growing CrossFit gym numbers is more important than getting the best field at a semifinals event. As you both said, the top of the sport will still rise to the top in the overall competition, but the bigger goal for the church is to grow the church.
CrossFit should live hopper select the movements for the first Open workout each year like 2 weeks before the official announcement. It would give them time to turn it into a workout (unknown) but would get the community excited to practice and would give everyone an early understanding of the standards. I think it could either be awesome or terrible 🤣
😂 entertaining yes. But also absolutely terrible.
I can see HQ adding another 2 semis for North America in years to come - so Northeast, Southeast, Northwest, Southwest. And I can see Europe needing 2 semis as well. One must hope that HQ sees the need as it arises and addresses that accordingly.
Opens up the question if the spots at the Games should be raised from 40 to 50. Then cut to 40 and 30 and maybe even 20 during the Games after several Events.
it looked CF was looking for the games athletes and use everyone else as revenue generators
Seems like CrossFit would use their "Top 100" rankings and see how many people from that list are in a semifinals to figure out how many spots they should allocate.
Isn’t it just like every other sport. The best 5 teams in the NBA could all be in the Western Confernce but only 1 of them will get to the finals.
But they aren’t claiming to find the fittest. If CrossFit dropped that whole piece and it was just a sport for sports sake I’m with you.
@@CTPCAM aren’t they claiming to find the best team? If the top 5 teams are in one conference but only one gets to play for a championship, it’s the same thing regardless of the label they put on their champion
@@mldralex yea. i mean this stance isn't a hill i'll die on. but i just feel like a sport being a sport we deal with how the sport is organized and accept it.
but claiming that you found the Fittest and giving them that title for some reason makes it different for me.
Remove that, and just call them the CF champion and I'm on board.
@@CTPCAM I for sure agree that they don't need to claim that they are finding the Fittest. Crossfit champion I'm onboard with as well.
Every sport has stronger divisions and weaker ones. Tampa Bay Bucs made the playoffs with a losing record bc the NFC South is bad. You don't see the NFL granting more playoff spots to the NFC East
No, it’s not fair… 🫤 I can relate…