What if the 2025 CrossFit Games Qualification Rules Were Applied in 2023 and 2024?
The 2025 CrossFit Games season has been announced — and among the many changes next year, the individual field size has been reduced from the traditional 40 athletes to 30.
- While the details on qualification remain thin, there is also no mention of region-specific qualifiers.
With the new rules in place, how would the past two Crossfit Games qualification seasons have played out? Let’s take a look.
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The 2024 CrossFit Games Season
To see who the top 30 Semifinal athletes were from this past year, we created a combined leaderboard and ranked the scores in each event from all 277 men and 279 women.
- However, because the running course in Event 1 this year was so different across the seven Semifinals, we only took the scores from Events 2-6 to make a global rank for this analysis.
Under the recent CrossFit Games qualification system, tickets were allocated to specific regions. If the 2025 rules were applied to the 2024 season, the CrossFit Games roster would have looked different in a few minor ways and one major way.
- On the men’s side, the combined Semifinals leaderboard places Tudor Magda (14th) and Seth Stovall (23rd) in the top 30 athletes, but they did not earn a Games ticket in 2024.
- On the women’s side, two women would have qualified who did not make the trip to Fort Worth, TX, in 2024: Anikha Greer (18th) and Ashleigh Wosny (28th).
And if the 2024 CrossFit Games operated under the new qualification rules, the third Fittest Women on Earth, Emily Rolfe, would’ve been watching from home.
- Rolfe finished 40th in the combined leaderboard. Although it’s important to note that running is one of Rolfe’s strengths, removing Event 1 hurt her total score more than others.
On the men’s side, there were a few top-20 Games finishes that we would have missed with a smaller field.
- Rookie sensation Austin Hatfield ended up in 10th after winning the final two events. He was 31st on the global Semifinals leaderboard and would’ve missed the Games.
Björgvin Karl Guðmundsson (16th) and Cole Greashaber (17th) would also have missed out on the Games if the field had been smaller as laid out for 2025.
The 2023 CrossFit Games Season
In 2023, we saw consistent programming across all the Semifinals and can use the full qualification test to determine the top athletes across the seven Semifinals.
Similar to 2024, Emily Rolfe was the top finisher at the CrossFit Games who landed outside the top 30 in a combined Semifinals leaderboard.
- In 2023, Rolfe finished 12th at the CrossFit Games, thanks in part to her event win in the “Cross Country 5K.”
Paige Semenza and Shelby Neal also finished in the top 20 at the CrossFit Games, but they were both outside the top 30 in the combined Semifinal leaderboard.
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Applying the 2025 Games qualification rules to 2023, three more European women would have made a trip to the Games.
- Jacqueline Dahlstrøm (20th), Linda Keesman(24th), and Thuri Helgadottir (27th) all finished in the top 30 of a combined leaderboard but didn’t advance out of a super competitive European Semifinal that year.
For the men in 2023, all of the top 30 from the combined Semifinal leaderboard earned their spot at the CrossFit Games.
Two men, Spencer Panchik (17th) and Colten Mertens (18th), placed in the top 20 at the Games but finished outside the top 30 men worldwide at Semifinals.
No More Regions?
If CrossFit focuses on the top 30 men and women from their online Semifinal regardless of location, we could see a change in the location of CrossFit Games athletes.
- In both 2023 and 2024, all of the top 30 women on the combined Semifinal leaderboard were from North America, Europe, and Oceania.
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For each of the past two years, two South Americans in the men’s competition have finished among the top 30 Semifinalists.
- In 2023, Kaique Cerveny (19th) and Kalyan Souza (25th) were in the top 30, while Gui Malheiros(5th) and Bruno Marins (30th) were in the top 30 this year.
Otherwise, the other 28 men in the top 30 were from North America, Europe, and Oceania.
The Big Picture: 2025 CrossFit Games Season Is Still Light On Details
The meat of the 2025 CrossFit Games season should come in early January when the rulebook is released.
While we would have missed two great performances by Emily Rolfe and Austin Hatfield’s stand-out rookie year, the majority of the top 20 would have been the same with the new rules or the old ones.
More CrossFit Stories
- Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr and Laura Horvath Made History at the 2024 Rogue Invitational
- From Dancing to CrossFit, Australia’s Emily Cairns Takes Center Stage at the Adaptive CrossFit Games
- CrossFit’s New Athlete Council – Learning Lessons From the Past
Featured image: Sebastian Vallejo
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