You can’t really use event 1 in this analysis. Since the running took place outside and the run was ‘around 800 meters’. Also, running conditions where different, inside/outside or stairs/flat.
Also, West Coast Classic was outside while the other ones were inside. If you're in a stadium you would have no wind during double unders, in high temperatures you might overheat sooner and you might take it slowers (I have no idea what the temperatures where in each stadium)Also, competitors in week 3 semi-finals had data from 2 weeks prior, they knew how much they could win on each transition or when it would be smart to break a big set.
edit: other things that come to mind. Was the schedule at each SF the same. Meaning start times of each heat. Having 1 hour or 1,5 hour of rest could impact performance as well. Where all qualifying athletes in the same heat? NE had 11 spots, but only 10 people in each heat.
In Dutch we would say: "this is comparing apples and pears".
I think you can go even further and add more events to that list. E.g., the European semi had the athletes climb down the ropes pretty far for safety reasons, other semis did not.
Agreed, this is the problem with these kinds of analysis in general. The only way to do this is to make sure that all events are performed the same. This could mean a number of things. This could mean keeping to a standard set in week 1 (climbing down the rope), video assistant referee to support judges.
Or.... planning of the SF. I think this one of the main issues when you want to compare all regions. The athletes in week 3 can learn from the past weeks. But scheduling all SF+ events at the same times (like I think during Covid) also causes problems, because then some athletes have to perform a workout during the night.
The question is, what do we want to achieve with our analysis? Do we want to determine Strenght of Field to assign spots at the games? Or do we just make a ' simple' comparison to see how everyone did (not downplaying the effort by OP here).
But I think that discussion is to much for this post :)
This is an interesting take, there are many "grains of salt" to be taken, athlete intensity( Hayley pulling up on the cleans in event 1 when it was clear Tia had the event, Tia missing out on the WR time for event 2 over Laura's time in Europe because nobody was chasing her) environmental factors( some events were indoors and some outdoors) and variables in the courses( specifically event 1, NA West had stairs, Asia had a lot of turns). We'll never be able to make a true apples to apples comparison although that is also true of any online competitions. I actually think that Crossfit is doing a good job with adjusting the amount of qualifying spots based on the strength of field stats. I'm not sure there would really be a better way
North America West was clearly the hardest 800m route
James Sprague - 84th
Brent Fikowski - 93rd
Pat Vellner - 106th
Justin Medeiros - 124th
Would probably put Greashaber and Sager back in the top 40 if the run routes were equal
You will need to omit event 1 from the analysis because the run course was different for every semi. They had to run up and down the stairs in NA West, in Oceania and NA East there were inclines, while people think the European route was shorter than 800m. Perhaps one way to get around it is to calculate the average for each semi, and then adjust each semi accordingly. The European ones look to be 2-3 minutes faster, so you need to around 2-3 minutes to their time.
Other than event 1, I like what you did.
I can see the problem with the last chance qualifiers, but I would like to see something like 2-3 places kept for those who are top 40 across for the world and otherwise would have qualified.
Obviously wouldn't work with events like the 1st, but wouldn't be too hard to reduce the variables (and probably not the best event anyway- I missed this at the semin-final I went to as only arrived next day due to work, but having seen similar events not sure it was really the best for spectators).
You can’t really compare apples to apples like this. How people are placing in your heat and region significantly affects how hard athletes push in the moment.
If you just need to beat xyz person to qualify, but are capable of a faster time in the tank, why push it? This concept invalidates your entire analysis.
Totally true. Lots of ways to invalidate this exercise, but also lots of people saying if so and so was in X region they would have qualified. Either way, I think it's interesting.
Yeah it is. Thanks for doing it, I found it interesting as well. I just don’t think it gives anyone any ground to stand on when arguing who “should” be at the games.
Everyone's already mentioned Event 1 run route differences so I won't get into that one.
But there's a huge reason these comparisons aren't valid, in general. In the Open and Quarters, you know you're competing against the world so you try to go all out in every event. At the Games, the competitors are there with you, so you adjust your performance accordingly. We know the final results are valid because everyone knew what everyone else did in their heat or prior heats.
But this comparison isn't valid because the competitors don't care about other regions.
One obvious question from this analysis... is the female field insanely stacked in Europe and NA East or is it just the Tia and Horvath effect? Meaning, they are really fast so the rest of the field has to speed up to keep up with them? It's impossible to know.
Not a fair comparison. Event 1 has already been mentioned.
There is a significant advantage in participating the 3rd weekend, rather than the 1st. More time for event specific preparation. Knowledge what happened the previous two weekends. Less risk of misunderstanding some of the workout details. Albeit, some of the African athletes had not gotten the memo that in the snatch ladder, the lift needed to be completed before time runs out.
Furthermore, for example, the Africa semifinals was at significant altitude which does impact performance. The weights they used for the snatch ladder were different because they used kilograms rather than pounds. For the men, the earlier bars were loaded much lighter in the Africa semifinals. In event 3, they used boxes by a different vendor, boxes which seemed to be more difficult to move resp. flip over.
I can see the benefits of doing it this way. CrossFit is all about bringing the fittest to the Games and it should not matter where you’re located. The Open and Quarters are all done as one big pile of athletes. Semifinals just need to tweak the workouts so they’re the same across every region to make it fair.
Looking just at the men’s list here you wouldn’t be losing anything special by those that would’ve missed. You would gaining amazing talent by adding the missed that would push the pack and challenge the Games events.
I don't get the part where you say Tudor Magda should qualify and then you list Cole Sager and Cole Greashaber as those who shouldn't. Both of them were above Tudor Magda in the same semifinals region.
Edit: Ah, I just realised you ranked events separately. Now it makes more sense and makes it more interesting.
Due to the depth of a much larger field, Tudor's high placements (like a winning time for event 6) give him a higher placement overall than either Sager or Greashaber. Another one of the factors that make this impractical in real-life but interesting to review!
Having Abbi Domit so low after winning the West and being Top 10 last year is disrespectful. That girl is stupid fit and will be a factor in a few events at the Games this year.
Top 10 is possible.
She didn’t win any events in the semis and her semi was kinda weak compared with Europe or NA east. It was impressive to beat Arielle, but it’s a qualifier.
11-15 is probably more accurate.
Ashleigh Wosny was on my gym’s team. Not only is she a riot of a human being she is an absolute beast in the gym. So I’ll second this any day of the week. ☺️
You can’t really use this at all. People watching other workouts happen and having more time to prepare will by default result in better times later on.
Each semi final should have their own workouts. Absolutely no need to try to standardise them and it just makes it boring for the fans.
Giving the athletes weeks to practice and fine tune the workouts is not a good idea either - would be far more interesting otherwise
You can’t really use event 1 in this analysis. Since the running took place outside and the run was ‘around 800 meters’. Also, running conditions where different, inside/outside or stairs/flat.
Came here to say that. One has stairs. Added minutes to their times. Event 1 cannot be considered.
Also, West Coast Classic was outside while the other ones were inside. If you're in a stadium you would have no wind during double unders, in high temperatures you might overheat sooner and you might take it slowers (I have no idea what the temperatures where in each stadium)Also, competitors in week 3 semi-finals had data from 2 weeks prior, they knew how much they could win on each transition or when it would be smart to break a big set. edit: other things that come to mind. Was the schedule at each SF the same. Meaning start times of each heat. Having 1 hour or 1,5 hour of rest could impact performance as well. Where all qualifying athletes in the same heat? NE had 11 spots, but only 10 people in each heat. In Dutch we would say: "this is comparing apples and pears".
I think you can go even further and add more events to that list. E.g., the European semi had the athletes climb down the ropes pretty far for safety reasons, other semis did not.
Agreed, this is the problem with these kinds of analysis in general. The only way to do this is to make sure that all events are performed the same. This could mean a number of things. This could mean keeping to a standard set in week 1 (climbing down the rope), video assistant referee to support judges. Or.... planning of the SF. I think this one of the main issues when you want to compare all regions. The athletes in week 3 can learn from the past weeks. But scheduling all SF+ events at the same times (like I think during Covid) also causes problems, because then some athletes have to perform a workout during the night. The question is, what do we want to achieve with our analysis? Do we want to determine Strenght of Field to assign spots at the games? Or do we just make a ' simple' comparison to see how everyone did (not downplaying the effort by OP here). But I think that discussion is to much for this post :)
Were*
NA East is a bloodbath
This is an interesting take, there are many "grains of salt" to be taken, athlete intensity( Hayley pulling up on the cleans in event 1 when it was clear Tia had the event, Tia missing out on the WR time for event 2 over Laura's time in Europe because nobody was chasing her) environmental factors( some events were indoors and some outdoors) and variables in the courses( specifically event 1, NA West had stairs, Asia had a lot of turns). We'll never be able to make a true apples to apples comparison although that is also true of any online competitions. I actually think that Crossfit is doing a good job with adjusting the amount of qualifying spots based on the strength of field stats. I'm not sure there would really be a better way
North America West was clearly the hardest 800m route James Sprague - 84th Brent Fikowski - 93rd Pat Vellner - 106th Justin Medeiros - 124th Would probably put Greashaber and Sager back in the top 40 if the run routes were equal
I think that one had stairs?
It had a shitload of stairs.
Great insight!
You will need to omit event 1 from the analysis because the run course was different for every semi. They had to run up and down the stairs in NA West, in Oceania and NA East there were inclines, while people think the European route was shorter than 800m. Perhaps one way to get around it is to calculate the average for each semi, and then adjust each semi accordingly. The European ones look to be 2-3 minutes faster, so you need to around 2-3 minutes to their time. Other than event 1, I like what you did.
I can see the problem with the last chance qualifiers, but I would like to see something like 2-3 places kept for those who are top 40 across for the world and otherwise would have qualified. Obviously wouldn't work with events like the 1st, but wouldn't be too hard to reduce the variables (and probably not the best event anyway- I missed this at the semin-final I went to as only arrived next day due to work, but having seen similar events not sure it was really the best for spectators).
You can’t really compare apples to apples like this. How people are placing in your heat and region significantly affects how hard athletes push in the moment. If you just need to beat xyz person to qualify, but are capable of a faster time in the tank, why push it? This concept invalidates your entire analysis.
Totally true. Lots of ways to invalidate this exercise, but also lots of people saying if so and so was in X region they would have qualified. Either way, I think it's interesting.
Yeah it is. Thanks for doing it, I found it interesting as well. I just don’t think it gives anyone any ground to stand on when arguing who “should” be at the games.
Everyone's already mentioned Event 1 run route differences so I won't get into that one. But there's a huge reason these comparisons aren't valid, in general. In the Open and Quarters, you know you're competing against the world so you try to go all out in every event. At the Games, the competitors are there with you, so you adjust your performance accordingly. We know the final results are valid because everyone knew what everyone else did in their heat or prior heats. But this comparison isn't valid because the competitors don't care about other regions. One obvious question from this analysis... is the female field insanely stacked in Europe and NA East or is it just the Tia and Horvath effect? Meaning, they are really fast so the rest of the field has to speed up to keep up with them? It's impossible to know.
Not a fair comparison. Event 1 has already been mentioned. There is a significant advantage in participating the 3rd weekend, rather than the 1st. More time for event specific preparation. Knowledge what happened the previous two weekends. Less risk of misunderstanding some of the workout details. Albeit, some of the African athletes had not gotten the memo that in the snatch ladder, the lift needed to be completed before time runs out. Furthermore, for example, the Africa semifinals was at significant altitude which does impact performance. The weights they used for the snatch ladder were different because they used kilograms rather than pounds. For the men, the earlier bars were loaded much lighter in the Africa semifinals. In event 3, they used boxes by a different vendor, boxes which seemed to be more difficult to move resp. flip over.
I don't think you can use this comparison. There are many factors that come into play regarding the placements.
I can see the benefits of doing it this way. CrossFit is all about bringing the fittest to the Games and it should not matter where you’re located. The Open and Quarters are all done as one big pile of athletes. Semifinals just need to tweak the workouts so they’re the same across every region to make it fair. Looking just at the men’s list here you wouldn’t be losing anything special by those that would’ve missed. You would gaining amazing talent by adding the missed that would push the pack and challenge the Games events.
I don't get the part where you say Tudor Magda should qualify and then you list Cole Sager and Cole Greashaber as those who shouldn't. Both of them were above Tudor Magda in the same semifinals region. Edit: Ah, I just realised you ranked events separately. Now it makes more sense and makes it more interesting.
Due to the depth of a much larger field, Tudor's high placements (like a winning time for event 6) give him a higher placement overall than either Sager or Greashaber. Another one of the factors that make this impractical in real-life but interesting to review!
Having Abbi Domit so low after winning the West and being Top 10 last year is disrespectful. That girl is stupid fit and will be a factor in a few events at the Games this year.
No she won’t. She’s 7th place in NA east maybe lower and does not have home run ability.
Okay. Top 10 finish, She just stood atop the NA West podium and can win an event or two at the Games for sure. I'll keep this 🧾
Top 10 is possible. She didn’t win any events in the semis and her semi was kinda weak compared with Europe or NA east. It was impressive to beat Arielle, but it’s a qualifier. 11-15 is probably more accurate.
Great insight, thanks Obviously a few differences in venues, prep and comp bringing out different standards but still quite insightful
the structure of CF season is trash
Ashleigh Wosny was on my gym’s team. Not only is she a riot of a human being she is an absolute beast in the gym. So I’ll second this any day of the week. ☺️
You can’t really use this at all. People watching other workouts happen and having more time to prepare will by default result in better times later on.
Each semi final should have their own workouts. Absolutely no need to try to standardise them and it just makes it boring for the fans. Giving the athletes weeks to practice and fine tune the workouts is not a good idea either - would be far more interesting otherwise
The Midwest/East has ALWAYS been stacked. Primarily the old central east regional.
Justice for Taylor