Every year the CrossFit Open is seen as the highlight on the calendar for millions of CrossFit athletes around the world.
It is the time of the year when every CrossFit community comes together to watch their athletes compete, and celebrate each athlete’s progress.
As a high intensity sport the three CrossFit Open workouts, spread over three weeks, are designed to test athletes on their cardio, gymnastic skills, and strength.
Lions Bay CrossFit gym in Gqeberha had a total of 56 athletes sign up to compete in this year’s open.
Out of the 56 athletes, an impressive 20 qualified for the quarter-finals, an incredible accomplishment as only the top 25 percent of the African region advances to the quarter-finals.
After the quarter-final, two teams of four and two individual athletes qualified for the semi-finals, making the 2024 CrossFit Open season another successful year for the gym which opened their doors seven years ago.
Elzaan Troskie, owner of Lions Bay, described this year’s open workouts as challenging, but it also gave athletes who usually compete in the scaled division a chance to move up to the rx division and improve their overall standing on the African leaderboard.
“I am very proud of them. It is a massive thing to put oneself in that position of competing. What is cool is that the people competing are not always people that competed in school sports, so it is nice to see that they have found a sport for them,.” Troskie said proudly.
The African region semi-finals, known as the Rebel Renegade Games, are scheduled to take place from May 31 to June 2 in Vanderbijlpark.
Despite CrossFit growing in popularity on the African continent, qualifying for the CrossFit Games stays highly competitive. CrossFit only invites the top individual male and female athletes, and the top team, to compete at the CrossFit Games.
Following the semi-finals, the top 40 males and females globally will compete at the CrossFit Games in the USA, in the hopes of getting crowned the “Fittest on Earth” which comes with a massive paycheck of more than $300 000.
“To see your gym’s name go out there…, it’s amazing,” Troskie added, as their semi-final athletes complete their final preparations for the big event.
Despite the US dollar preventing some athletes from signing up for the quarter- and semi-finals, Troskie believes having a large group of competitive athletes qualify will help grow the sport in the city, and invite more people to their gym.
The launch of their CrossFit kids’ programme is one of the many ways this local gym wants to inspire the next generation of competitive CrossFit athletes, teaching them the basic CrossFit movements.
For more info about their CrossFit kids’ programme, visit www.lionsbaycrossfit.com/.
To watch the livestream of the African region semi-finals, visit the CrossFit Games App, their YouTube channel, or go to Games.Crossfit.com.
