In 2018, roughly 429,000 athletes participated in The CrossFit Open. Only 25,000 people participated back in 2011. In short, the sport has exploded. Therein lies the problem Greg Glassman is trying to solve through the new CrossFit season format. The growth CrossFit Inc. has seen is international, yet the representation is still roughly the same year over year.

Reebok CrossFit Open: The Old Format In the good ol’ days, all CrossFit athletes participated in the The CrossFit Open. From there, the top athletes in each of the 18 world-wide regions move on to a another competition called, Regionals. For the past several years, the old format of the CrossFit Games season was as follows: “The season culminates in the Reebok CrossFit Games. At this point in the season, the field has been whittled down from hundreds of thousands of athletes in the Open to the world's fittest 40 men, 40 women, 40 teams, 80 teenagers, and 240 masters.” For more information on how things used to be, you can read about it’s extensive history here . The 2019 Fall CrossFit Open Format In 2018, there were only 32 different flags represented at the Games. In 2019, Greg Glassman decided to ensure that every country that practices CrossFit sends an athlete to the Games. 162 countries have licensed CrossFit affiliates... and because of the Open alone, 114 of these countries were represented at the 2019 CrossFit Games.

The CrossFit Open 2019: The top male and female from every country with a CrossFit affiliate received an invitation to the Games. Can you imagine how difficult it is to win the Open if you’re in a country like USA, Canada, U.K., or Australia? Moving forward, don’t expect to see many of the big names competing seriously in the Open. They may participate to keep things interesting (and in order to be seeded well for the Games), but I don’t think any of them are doing it expecting to win and have that be their meal ticket. In addition to the top finishers of each country, the next best 20 athletes from the worldwide Open will be invited as well. When is the 2019 CrossFit Open? There will be two Opens in 2019. Our first Open took place this past February, running for five weeks into March. The next 2019 Open will be kicking off on October 10th. The October 2019 Open will help determine the athletes participating in the 2020 games - and is technically considered the 2020 CrossFit Open. Moving forward, the CrossFit Open will be in October only. As of right now, we have no further insight as to what the October Open will look like or when the 2020 Games will take place.

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Teams: Teams no longer have to belong to the same affiliate. CrossFit is taking a page out of the NBA’s playbook. Here come the Super Teams... let the Kevin Durant & LeBron James comparisons begin! Froning is obviously Jordan. However, the only way teams can now qualify is through Sanctionals. According to the rulebook the team’s six (two alternates) members must comprise the four athletes who competed at the Sanctionals competition on the same team, plus two alternates (one man and one woman). After the names of those six members is provided to the Games staff, the team may only use those athletes to field their team at the 2019 CrossFit Games. 2019 CrossFit Open Masters Athletes: A few changes for you guys. The rulebook states that age group athletes are still going to compete in the Open in order to make the cut to compete in the Online Qualifier. From there, the qualifier will decide who goes on to the Games. That said, the number of athletes qualifying for each division was lowered to 10 (down from 20). The number remains the same (200) for the number of athletes in each division who can qualify for the Online Qualifier. Like in years past, age-group athletes submitting scores have to use a registered judge, as well as videotape workouts, since at least one video will asked to be submitted for review once the OLQ wraps up. There’s also the option to elect to submit workout videos online for judging and validation. New this year, CrossFit Inc. did wipe out the rule that placements in the Open will carry over and be used to count as an event placement for the Age Group Qualifiers. Which makes the OLQ more of a ‘clean slate’. One last thing worth noting from the official rulebook: Ties on the overall leaderboard for Online Qualifier will be broken by awarding the best position to the athlete who has the highest result in any single Online Qualifier workout. If athletes remain tied after this first tiebreaker, the process continues to their next-highest single result, and so forth. Results from individual Open workouts will NOT be used to break ties on the overall Online Qualifier leaderboard. Ties will not be broken for single event results. More than one athlete can share an event result, and each will earn the original point value. (Source) What are the dates for the Age Group Online Qualifier? Workouts for the Age Group Online Qualifier workouts were released on May 2nd, 2019. The submission deadline was Monday, May 6th. At-Large Athletes: CrossFit Inc. reserves the right to send 4 athletes who have failed to qualify otherwise to the Games. This is a complete CYA move. If a fan favorite fails to qualify through the Open or through a sanctioned event, you can believe Dave Castro will send a quick text message saying, “I got you covered, boo. You've always had the capacity in my eyes <3”. Inevitably, this will be very controversial, and reminds us, again, that this is a private company and they make their own rules.