For those of you who didn’t make it out to the Home Depot Center yesterday and weren’t following along online, the CrossFit Games for 2011 finished yesterday with a bang! While the defending 2010 champion Kristan Clever certainly gave her a run for the money, it was only enough for 1st runner up. Sunday there was a new winner — “Iceland Annie” Thorisdottir. In the 2009 games, Annie was in the lead heading into the last event — but she had never done a muscle up in her life… and she had to do TEN as part of the final chipper. It was very inspiring to see her try again and again and eventually get her first ever muscle up in front of the large crowd of spectators. In 2010, she had worked on her goats and with an impressive performance, finished 2nd overall. At the young age of 21, I expect to see Annie dominating future games as well.

On the men’s side of the house, the new champion is Rich Froning. He avenged his 2nd place finish in 2010 and demonstrated much improved rope climb skills. In the final event that finished with a grueling sled pull, it was stunning to watch Pat Barber somehow find a 2nd (or 3rd!) wind and reel the sled in, hand over hand. While his fellow competitors’ sleds seemed akin to the turtle races at Brennan’s, Pat’s sled engaged some sort of turbo boost to fly across the finish line.

In the team competition, CrossFit New England was dominating going into Sunday. They had a near insurmountable lead, but the playing field was leveled as slates were wiped clean for the final 6 teams. The last team event was winner-take-all and consisted of 6 different “Girl WODs” you all know and likely despise. Starting with the female team members, one was to perform Elizabeth then tag  her teammate who would perform Fran. Next would be Isabel and then the male teammates got brought in, beginning with Grace, then Diane and finishing up with Karen. As this was a relay, the team could not advance until each person completed their respective WOD. One team was unfortunately held up as their teammate was stuck for quite some time on the last 9 dips of Elizabeth. Nevertheless, they stuck around and completed all six of their workouts despite having reached the 35 minute time cap. In a great show of camaraderie, the other affiliate teams stuck around and cheered them on to completion. At the end of the day, CF New England continued their dominance and took home the top spot. They executed their gameplan perfectly, as each teammate flew through their workouts and were quite a sight to see.

Congrats to all the winners of this years’ CF Games and if you didn’t get a chance to catch any of the coverage, check out the archives!

WOD 08.01.11

Deadlift

For time:
5 Rounds
5 Power Cleans (Heavy)
5 Box Jumps (High)
then…
Immediately cash out with 250m Row