Tia-Clair Toomey and Mat Fraser successfully defended their Reebok CrossFit Games titles in Madison, Wisconsin, on Sunday.
Toomey dominated the women’s field to seal her third successive title, while Fraser fought back after surrendering the leader’s jersey on Friday to lift his fourth crown.
Here, we look at the key talking points from the final day of action.
TIA AN ALL-TIME GREAT
The Queensland native is the first woman to win three CrossFit Games championships.
Like four-time winner Rich Froning, she has never finished lower than second overall and looked utterly dominant since securing victory in the first event on Thursday morning.
In fact, the 26-year-old finished outside the top-four in just two of the 12 events this weekend, one of which had 75 athletes and another event that only lasted 95 seconds.
She ripped through massive sets, kept the pace all the way through to triumph in the First Cut, Split Triplet, Clean, Swim Paddle and The Standard events.
Toomey has taken significant leaps forward to how she operated in previous years, but in addition, it’s been scary to watch her superiority over rivals in Madison all week.
It’s not her physical game, but her mental game that impressed, and on a weekend where she was faced with a lot of unknowns, she handled herself with a lot of composure and the ferocity she brought to the competition was nothing short of sensational.
With four championship wins, we’ve yet to see the ceiling with her. There is more to come for this messiah.
FEROCIOUS FRASER
The American pushed at a pace he’s never gone before in order to stay ahead of overnight leader Noah Ohlsen and lift a fourth crown.
Trailing by 15 points heading into the final day, the 29-year-old backed up a solid swim with second in Ringer 1 and then winning both the Ringer 2 and The Standard workouts.
He’s so durable, and apart from early setbacks in the Ruck and Sprint Couplet, he wiped the floor clean when it came to sessions in the coliseum, winning three of the five events there.
A phenomenal return.
One may argue against this, but this is the most impressive triumph of his four titles to date. With Ohlsen ahead until Sunday afternoon, and the pressure building, Fraser earned this trophy more than his previous successes back in 2016, 2017 and 2018.
His victory in Madison is a testament to him as an athlete, a competitor and a general person. He held himself together with great calmness and barreled through the reps with conviction.
Depending on its current size, they’ll need a bigger trophy cabinet at his training base in Cookeville as he is also a team-mate of four-time champion Toomey.
If Fraser can continue this sparkling form, he looks difficult to stop any time soon.
PROUD FINISH FOR OHLSEN
A first podium for the Miami man.
It’s easy to get down on him having the leader’s jersey on Sunday morning and then dropping back in the final two events but he still produced a phenomenal weekend.
He wasn’t able to keep up with Fraser on the Ringer workouts, clinching 4th and 5th in comparison to the champion’s 2nd and 1st.
The final event, in particular, was immense to watch as he traded places back and forth with Fraser in the clean and jerks, muscle ups and snatches.
It was an outstanding display, nevertheless, and Ohlsen has nothing to be disappointed about when he leaves Madison to return to his base in Florida later this week.
He needs to set his schedule now for the year ahead and come back hungrier and sharper in 2020. Grabbing that white leader’s jersey should be a key target for the popular 28-year-old next year.
GREENE SHINES
What can we say about Jame Greene. An impeccable result for the Abu Dhabi resident.
The Kiwi-born athlete wheeled away in celebration as she crossed the finish line to seal second in The Standard and clinch a first-ever podium finish at the Games.
With Katrin Davidsdottir breathing down her neck ahead of the final event, Greene needed to produce something majestic, and her performance on the muscle ups was a joy to watch.
The 28-year-old, who trains out of CrossFit Yas in the UAE capital, placed eighth back in the 2017 Games and was a model of consistency all week in Wisconsin.
Among her standout displays from the competition were finishing third in the First Cut and Mary, second in the Standard, as well as a host of other fourth-place finishes.
It caps off a memorable week for Greene who hummed with perfection at the Alliant Energy Center.
