The Sevan Podcast - #797 - Is there a way to the CrossFit games? Exemptions and Explanations w/ Brian Friend & Mike Halpin

Episode Date: February 14, 2023

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Mountain time. Bam, we're live. You're ready to go. You're a mountain man now. Brian, friend. Mr. Haplen. Halpin. Halpin. It's Hapalina. It's not Henry.

Mr. Halpin. We have a lot of trouble. A couple things I want to start. Boy, there's a lot I want to start with the intro. But first I want to say this. I have been doing my research, and I think I solved. Oh, my goodness. Let's see how this is going to work.

I think I've solved the problem with understanding the strength of field worldwide rankings. rankings now you have to understand something this is playing at 1.5 speed what i'm about to show you and because the crossfit games truly does not want to share any of this information and they don't care because if they did someone i would have some liaison with the biggest podcast and the biggest voice in the space bar none and i don't and instead when i show their video clips i get reported and it doesn't play well for me so i have to just show this to you in small clips because they don't really care about you guys knowing you have to know that that is a fact and so i'm going to show this to you in small clips and by the end of this you'll

see why we're not going to do a podcast tonight we're just going to do whiskey shots because after you watch this you're going to have a complete understanding it's going to be pointless um here it is uh mr bob eubanks is going to explain dave eubanks sorry thanks different guy uh thank you uh mr uh helping uh is going to explain to you how the worldwide strength uh just sit back and relax here is hailey supposed to be standing there with the sign strength what is the same strength of field damn it i'm gonna write down big here strength of field okay i've tried so no no no sorry this isn't strength this is sort of strength of field worldwide rankings all summed up into how each semi-final is allocated

how many people from each semi-ifinal gets to go to the games here we go one additional spot on the first round that's it's that simple from there we move forward and the way the calculation works is we take the number here okay so here we go guys pay attention I can only show you in seven second increments

or else CrossFit will bust me. Yes, this is. Yes, Judy. This is the woke guy. Yep. That's correct. Divided by the number of spots already allocated plus one. So in the first round, we just divided six by one, three by one and one by one, which is that number.

But now the EU has been allocated one additional spot. You guys following? Pretty, pretty simple, right? We divide six by one plus one, which is two, right? Which makes their new number three. Okay. You guys getting this? This is how it's allocated.

I wish I could tell you I was taking this out of context. I've watched this three times. Okay. Since no additional spots were allocated for Oceania or Asia, they maintain their first round numbers. Okay. That's it. Oh, shut up, Chase. You don't know what the fuck he's saying.

What do you mean, okay? Now, we look at this. Based on the rules that we're applying to this, we say that Oceania is going to get the next spot because if there's any ties on our board. Now, here's the thing. This goes on for four or five minutes. Thank God at 1250, Adrian comes on and says, okay, I'm going to take a shot at this. And he does take a shot at it. And it's the kind of thing that when Adrian says it, you can understand it.

But the second he's done talking about it, you forget. You're like, wait, wait a second. How exactly does it work? And then I want to say – and then Adrian sums it up and kind of like mellows out your fears because you can't – you're not able to hold the quadratic equation, the dehaunt. What do they call it? The dehaunt method in your head. You're not able to hold that dehaunt method in your head that all the great governments are using. So Adrian makes you feel better that at the end of the day, don't worry.

The best athletes are going to go. Just put your head down and work. the best athletes are going to go just put your head down and work and so uh that's on the crossfit podcast uh 277 i don't think that's exactly what he says to the athletes he says pull up your bootstraps and get to work grab your friends and get inside the top 100 yes you'll get the most spots to go to semifinals. Yes. You can do it. You can do it if you live in certain places. I want to preface one more thing too. They didn't say this specifically, but very close,

and I think I'm getting the spirit of it 100% accurate. CrossFit is trying to do three things. I mean this with all sincerity and no hate. They're trying to present to you the strongest field Where? At the CrossFit Games No they're not Okay Okay fine

They're trying to get good global representation Agreed And three They're trying to Have a slight bias Towards the redundancy of athletes coming back so that the narrative will have people in it, a thread and a narrative from year to year with people we can recognize. I think those are the three things, whether it's true or not, that they claim that's one of the few big picture things that I was able to take away after watching three podcasts where Chase had Adrian Eubanks and Becky Harsh on, which was just released. But there are some definitely some huge red flags. And I do think that that's fair to identify those three things as things that they are attempting to do. And then to find the balance between those three things is, I think, where the challenge comes.

there's steps to get to the crossfit games and those steps necessarily have not changed to any dramatic amount meaning you do the open then you go to stage two stage three and then the games and those stages those names of those stages have changed you know sectionals regional sanctionals semifinals but it's basically that same oh this is the third this will be the third season in a row that it's gone open quarterfinals semifinals game so there is consistency there okay good oh annie thor's daughter posted uh she is going indie uh this afternoon i i do also i would like to say that that being said i would like to jump forward the most interesting thing for me if you guys don't mind would you guys like to talk about the exemption thing because that can we start lead us we'll follow we're ready for all of. Okay. We'll come back to the math class

in a minute. But first, there were exemptions that athletes could file in order to switch which semi-final they would be in. Do you have the rulebook there? It's section 1.09 of the rulebook.

I can forget it. Because it's... Mr. Hoffman pulling more than his weight this evening. You know, a few. Let me set up the three things that she said, and then I'll give the floor to you, Brian. The four things Becky said there are four things because I watched you had to show three years of residency, which is basically I think she even gives the date February 16th of 2020 moving forward. Number two, that could be one reason that you change. Number two could be a political situation. And that was a little weird. She had a couple different reasons. She talked about visas, whether you could get visas. Another thing she talked about is whether you could even return back to your own country.

And then the third thing they brought up was financial hardship. And the fourth category is the other category whereas if you didn't if your reason for wanting to switch semi-finals didn't fall into the three years of sustained residency of political issues or financial hardship you could do a fourth category which was other like um you had a venereal disease flare-up but only when you returned to that particular country you know like something something like that very straightforward to document that one i need i want to give an example that's the problem videos by the way that's the problem with all of these videos there is so much vagueness and so few examples given and i will give an example for instance they tell you that a lot of people did not um uh try to get exemptions to switch

semifinals i have no idea what that means not a lot not a lot relative to the 280 000 people who uh try to do the open every year like i don't i don't there's a lot of stuff like that where we just have to sort of take their word on it yeah so they only limited it by saying that they were reviewing athletes that they believed had a chance or did not have a chance of making the semifinals but if you look at that list and i think brian spin pulled in their rankings next to his article uh there's athletes that sure i guess nobody wants to tell them they couldn't but i wouldn't put them in a top 100 i i'm not i'm not a okay okay i see what you're saying i see what you're saying there i but i'm not in favor i'm not a believer in the

narrative of the popularity contest i i i did not witness that when i was at crossfit i just want you to know that oh and we're gonna end up in this agreeing i mean look i brought brian to work on the crossfit podcast he wasn't winning shit for a pop he brought me there you go another person has no chance of winning popularity contest so they're all good if you check my instagram it's not happening anytime soon there you go me and you both um so it's i'm glad that you watched that seven and that you brought that up you know and relative to what's in the rule book and usually in the rule book. And usually in the rule book, they have a clause that they like to include in various sections. It says at CrossFit sole discretion, right? This particular section of the rule book 1.09 in the bottom half, where they intro this idea of potentially, um, applying for

an exemption. They do have four bullet points. The four bullet points there are basically residency. It's below this, Caleb. Residency, extreme financial hardship. No, above that. Oh, what one do you have? Tell me this one. This is the 2022 rulebook. I have it, Caleb.

I'll grab it. By the way, it's worth noting that the rulebook regularly updates. So this is the one that Mike's going to pull up now is version five of the 2023 rulebook. CrossFit announces when the rulebook is written. This case, it was in the fall. But unless you're checking regularly the rulebook, you might not know that there's additions and subtractions from the rulebook as the season goes on. And I'm not sure if there's actually are subtractions or not, but there's definitely things that are added. In some cases, it might be related to prize purse.

So they really rarely announce the semifinal prize purse ahead of time. They will have it at some point and it will be added. And then this one, which is to 2023 version five will be updated. So when I saw that at first, I thought they'd update it and taken that stuff out, but they have not. It's still right there. And those are the four bullets. So residency, which we want to talk a little bit about these in a second, financial hardship, political hardship, and then visa issues. So those are the four things that they list. There's nothing here that says other category. There's nothing here that says at CrossFit sole discretion, we might give grant, you know, grant things for other

cases. And when I think that one of the misunderstandings that some people had when Mike and I were kind of bringing attention to the, this, this conversation by highlighting the specific cases of Catherine David Sutter and Allie Turner is, is two things. One, we don't think the athletes are doing anything wrong. The athletes got the rules, read the, you know, you can click on here and go to a form where it says this and read there. They went through the form, they submitted, they talked to their teams. They came up with what they thought was the case they had to, to get an exemption to compete where they live basically. And they submitted it. And that's all that the athletes can do.

And it is not Katrin's responsibility, whatever CrossFit's decision is, or what it is for any other athlete. And I completely, we all agree about that. We also aren't asking CrossFit to release intimate details about any athletes. We don't, I don't need to know anything about the Katrin situation,

except for she was granted an exemption and the reason, residency or visa. Well, we don't even know know anything about the catcher situation except for she was granted an exemption and the reason residency or visa. Well, we don't even know what it is, right? We don't know if it's financial hardship, residency or the other, because Becky does say that there's another category. Right. And what if it's that her boyfriend is suicidal and that if she leaves him, he'll kill himself? What if it's that? Like, we don't know.

And I think it would be great to have a fifth bullet on here that's they're not listing in other categories brian's point other or extraneous reasons and then all that i'm asking but there is on the application i guess can we click the this button according to her okay i tried to bring it up and it's no longer okay okay okay sorry brian go on because it was expired february 1st i brought it there had to be submitted by february 1st um if you never clicked on the form, then you wouldn't know that there was the other category because it's not listed in the rule book. The rule book is public forum.

I guess that link also was, and maybe we should have done that to find out, but you, I would want to have consistency if it's in the form. I would think it should also be an option that's listed there because otherwise someone might say, well, I don't meet any of those four requirements,

even though I'm taking care of my mother this year and she has cancer. And if I don't, and if I leave, then she has, I have to get a personal, you know, whatever the example. Right. Right. I have a dog and I see other, then they might've clicked on the form and had a chance to pursue that. So I think it would be very simple to just put the other as an option there. Either way, you were talking about their vagueness. It's past February 1st. I don't see why they couldn't put out a little report that says, in year one, we got 98 submissions for exemptions. We dismissed 50 of them as not being competitive, as it says in the bolder at the top, that they are relevant for a semifinal advancement potentially. And of the other 50 that we looked at, or 48 that we looked at, we denied 25 of them. And of the remaining, we awarded this many for visa, this many for residency, this many for

political hardship, and this many for financial hardship. That's it. And then I could look at it and I could say, okay, they approved Katrin for residency, which is what we're assuming they're approving her for. And as she said, she's been living in the United States since 2015. The rule, as it's written, by the way, it's fair for us to assume this. If you don't give us the facts, it's OK that we assume stuff. And anyone's like, oh, why are you guys talking about this? You guys worry about such little details. There's so few athletes that care. Hey, listen, there's only 40 men and 40 women who go to the games. You have one of the

biggest female names who just got an exemption. And you have this other girl who comes from one of the most interesting regions where the greatest CrossFitter who ever lived, Oceana, Ellie Turner's coming from that reason. And she happens to be mating with the potentially going to be one of the greatest CrossFitters who ever lived, already is one of the greatest CrossFitters who ever lived and training with them. And if that's not an exception in the other category i happen to be training with the greatest crossfitter alive competing today justin madaris i mean so so don't i know that there's some smug motherfuckers over across right now we're like oh these guys are dragging this out again hey you're lucky we're dragging it out

you're lucky the most popular podcast in the group is talking about you. Okay, sorry, Brian. In the case of Katrin, we can make the assumption because we can look at the other three. We know she's not in an extreme financial hardship. We know that there's no political hardships preventing her from traveling to and from Europe because she's been regularly doing it with no problems. We could, but there is a lot of gray area with the visa. Visas are always a little bit touchy. Sometimes they change, maybe in the process of trying to get citizenship

or something in the US, there's something going on. And you know what? If it just said Katrin David's daughter approved visa, I would have no questions. I would say, oh, she must have something going on with her visa. Why doesn't she share it? Who cares?

How personal could it be? I mean, she basically did. She said she's been living here since 2015. And we know that. The problem is last year she was in Iceland for half the year. And it says in their rule, sustained residency in a single country outside of the athlete's country of citizenship. So if they're saying that if that's the if that's the clause that they're saying, because it says outside of the athlete's country of citizenship, that she can get away with living in Iceland because that is her country of citizenship, then explain that to us. Maybe because Ellie Turner had to spend some time in Canada because of visas are complicated. So she spent some time in Canada, spent some time in the US, and maybe that counts as two countries.

And if that's the case, OK, then tell us. And maybe that counts as two countries. And if her on the show, that wasn't by choice. That was for political reasons slash visa reasons. She was she was dealing with red tape. She wanted to be in the States and training. OK, sorry, Mike. Go ahead. Just to add for Katrin, do you recall that at the game she was possibly going to be the alternate alternate if Lauren couldn't compete? Oh, she was. So with that, as far as I read, talking about on the team, you're talking about on the team. Yeah.

So if you look at the nail in the coffin, people brace yourself. If you look at last year, there was a team that was not allowed to compete because an athlete lived more than a hundred miles away from his affiliate. Now there's an athlete that's claiming that she was an alternate on the team. And as far as the rules go, they're a little muddy as most of them are. There isn't rules that say something for an alternate, but it basically says if you are to use an alternate,

that they were at the open at the same affiliate and followed all the same instructions. So with that, we are stating that Katrin is at for that process was capable of at least attempting to say because she never actually was an alternate of attempting to say that she had the capability of being an alternate for Team Reykjavik. So that would mean that she followed all the rules to a T. She was at that affiliate training primarily, and she had mailing addresses, same as Khan, same as Tola, who we all remember had to move there on very specific days, be there on very specific days. And because of that other team, we got a very clear picture that they were even having to keep tracking of journal entries and time cards and whatever else. So we're to say that the same athlete can say that she did all of that for six months

for that team and then also somehow lived in the United States for three sustained years since 2020. So hold on a second. Let's let this one breathe. Brian, did you know he's going to come on here and drop that bomb? I knew it was possible. Holy shit.

Does everyone here get what he's saying? How is she going to be on the Iceland team when one of the rules is that you had to live in Iceland and now she has an exemption for being lived in the United States for three sustained years. This is a it's not impossible in this era. Anything's possible in the woke era. But this is this is weird.

And just to be clear, you have any explanation for it, Mike? Can you give him any wiggle room if you were CrossFit? Is there anything you could throw out there and be like, well, actually, I don't know that they didn't go and ask if Katrin could compete. And then they found out that she didn't actually live there or that she wasn't following the standard rules and therefore that was why lauren had to compete but we did oh i'm just saying but we did see the videos of her competing in iceland you know under yami's uh tutelage and we've seen on the doters podcast that her and katrin are in the same room now i want to caveat out this whole thing because because I obviously responded on Friday to her and we had a bit of back and forth.

I'm using Katrin as an athlete in a sport. And that's the only tense that I'm using when speaking about her. I'm not saying her personally, I'm not saying I should get to know where she lives just because she is an athlete. I'm saying if a sport puts out a rule and an athlete is following that rule or not following it, commentators should be allowed to talk about it. If there was a hold last night in the Super Bowl and it was a bit of a ticky-tack hold, as far as I would say, I'm allowed to talk about that athlete. I'm allowed to talk about what they did, and I'm allowed to talk about what I think about it. That's all I'm talking about. I'm saying, how do these rules compute with the athletes that are, that are having to follow them on the field and, and in these cases off the field and obviously

off the field touches on a lot of personal information, a lot of heartache. We, we have the Roman stories. We have the Dennis Samson off stories. We have a lot of heartache. We have the Roman stories. We have the Denis Samsonov stories. We have a lot of different stories of athletes that may have actual political hardship, may even just be in the process of residency. But to be clear, CrossFit even talks about if you are applying for new citizenship and how that's supposed to work. And then the exemption process is you have to show residence so i'm saying catchments followed the rules but but here's the other bomb that i'd like to drop she is the best game player at this she moved in what 2016 to the united states competed in

north america with a u.s flag next to name, which Boz said might make athletes feel weird. If they have a Japanese flag next to their name or something like that. I think that's bullshit that they have you switch your flag. You know what? That that's like some vindictive shit. That's bullshit. And, and you know what?

Go, yeah, go ahead, Michael. There's zero reason they have to change the flag. The fields are actually two different fields. If you break it down, there's a,

there's a country field and there's a region field. The country field controls the flags. Don't ask me why. If you break it down, there's a country field and there's a region field. The country field controls the flags. Don't ask me why. It goes against their whole premise that they keep reiterating over and over that we want to show greater global representation. Like, stop it. Stop with the flag stuff. They don't show certain flags for whole other reasons. They don't show certain flags for whole other reasons.

But in the cases of a flag, if Katrin raises the Icelandic flag when she walks into the stadium. I think they will change the flag for the games. I think that they will have the flag of their citizenship at the games. I don't know. I don't know. It didn't seem like that with what Adrian said. I also want to know. It specifically says this, though. And this is what you know, and if that's what he said, that's great.

And this is one of the problems with, with CrossFit recently is that there's not consistency across divisions or across platforms that are disseminating information, but this is what it says on the article, which is called athletes granted competition region exemptions due to limitations of our leaderboard platform, which is what Mike was alluding to athletes who have chosen to accept the approved exemption from their original region will be referred to as from the new region during the

open quarterfinals and semifinals that the flag that will appear on the leaderboard will be that of the new region open quarterfinals and semifinals i must again i am assuming because they don't mention the games that but that for the games it will revert to their country of citizenship website issue yeah okay well i'm reading into it and i'm the way i felt it um he did not say it was at least i didn't hear adrian say it was because of a um you know uh technical horsepower issue and it seemed like there was almost like a vindictive component to it like it it was like, are you sure you know what you're doing? Cause once you do that, there'll be no exceptions. Yeah. So I thought that was the three things that you were coming up with

earlier. So in those cases, the three things that they're saying, they're saying back to athletes after they go through the exemption process. And it is a great podcast with the three of them. So feel free to listen to that and, and mute me. But with it, it's three things. It is, what are you doing to your to that and mute me. But with it, it's three things. It is what are you doing to your region that you're leaving, which is the be all end all that I think most of our conversation would likely be about. Whatever this is with the flags and that it's permanent or at least it's semi-permanent because they said it was permanent. And then they also said that they would be revalidating it with the athlete as the years went on.

So what happens if they just let people compete where they want? I mean, I want to echo what Mike said. Like, I don't have an issue with Katrin in regards to the fact that I think she should be allowed to compete wherever you want. I think anyone should be allowed to compete wherever they want. I mean, here's the thing part. You know, some people have speculated that in the case of Ellie Turner, maybe they didn't want to grant her that exemption because if she doesn't go back and compete in Oceania, that Antia is not there this year. And now we know that Cara is not here this year. And they're guaranteeing them three qualifying spots that they're like, oh, my God, if we take away their three best women and then they still get three spots, that's not looking great.

I hope they didn't say that because that's pretty damning. No, no, no. No one from CrossFit has said that. People have speculated it. I've gotten some DMs asking, do you think this is possible? So that's out there. One of the issues is how does the moving of regions affect qualifying spots? And that's where these conversations all kind of come together is that in the

current model, we have every athlete in the top 100 counting as one. So it doesn't matter if it's Tia or if it's Marnie Sykes, or if it's Gracie Walton, three people, different people from Australia that could, you know, be whatever they're all one.

It also has been said by the person who spent the entire off season creating this system, that one person in your semifinal could make the difference. One person from your semifinal or competitive region in the top 100, more or less could make the difference between you getting an extra spot or not. Therefore, losing someone from that competitive region can be detrimental. And that's where what Mike's alluding to from the podcast is that they're asking the athletes, are you aware of the fact that if you leave that region, you could be potentially affecting the number of game spots allocated? Yeah. What do they care? What is that? Some sort of like people are going to think less of you because your countrymen are going to shit on you and you're going to sell less toast. I didn't understand that either.

Why the fuck would the athlete care? So, but this is not a single one backed out. Yeah, this is something a few people have been messaging me or commenting even publicly saying, stop complaining, Brian. Give us some answers. Give us some solutions. What's your what would you like to see happen? And I took a little bit of exception to that because I feel like I've been doing that. And what I've been basically trying to reiterate is keep it simple, make it simple to understand,

make it simple in application. And, and the simple, the simple way when it comes to this competing where you live is what I've been saying, give every spot, give every place one, always have one, you get your global representation. And as athletes move around, you have to have a worldwide ranking system that affects the strength of field allocation system that actually rewards regions that are truly strong, not that they have the most people, but they have the most competitive people there. And there are systems that you can do this with. And some of them, I think Mike has actually done this for. Hey, why even do that?

Why not let people compete wherever they fucking want? And then clearly strong athletes will go down to these other regions and hammer people. But I know what you're going to say. They want global representation. They want someone that. I'm not going to say that at all. I'm saying at the start of the season, I think it makes sense. When I register for the Open, as nobody who has any intention of advancing in the season,

definitely not competing for semifinals or money, I write where I live, I write my affiliate, and I'm assigned a competitive region. And I think it can be that simple. Where are you living? Okay, you're living there? Good. That's where you compete this year. Great. Now we have the list of the people that are competing there at the start of the season. And we can say, oh, wow, there's a man, a lot of the top women are in North America West this year, even though they're from different parts of the world, we know that's going to be a strong region. And because they've relocated there, it's going to have an effect on the strength of field allocations. And that region is going to get more representation, not because necessarily all the best women in the world are inherently from North America West.

They just happen to be there right now. And that's why I gave some examples on my Instagram of things from the past where someone pops up in a region, Matt Fraser had an immediately impacts the competitive landscape of that field. But the system back then didn't allow for more spots. They just got three spots and then they got three spots. Then they can solve the regions. They got five spots. They just got three spots, and then they got three spots, then they consolidated regions, and they got five spots.

It had nothing to do with competition. But if you looked at the people missing out, sometimes Spencer Henda would miss for two years and then make the games and get fifth place at the games. I wanted to see him at the games the previous two years, and he would have made it if Matt Fraser hadn't entered there. Well, in this new system, the whole idea is that when someone enters that competitive field that's as good as Matt Fraser or Katrin Davidsdottir or Tia Claire Toomey or Ellie Turner or whomever, that it would actually have an impact on their semifinal field to the point where there would be an extra person.

And by the same token, if Roman's competing in North America, take a spot away from Asia. Those guys, great. The guys from Asia, I would love for them to be flooding the top of the leaderboard. Every other person, man, from Asia who's competed at the Games in the last four years has gotten last or not showed up to compete. Roman's not there this year. And they're giving them two spots. So we're basically just saying, well, there's actually 38 guys competing in the Games this year. Until someone from Asia does something different.

And once they do, then we will reward them. does something different. And once they do, then we will reward them. Let me stop here. Some people have... Jethro Cardona, bring back regionals. Problem solved.

There was another question here. Can teams apply for exemptions for semifinals? The new rules sort of get around that. Yeah, no need to. They just have to do the same open location. William Leeper. Oh, just thank you.

I do want to say this. I thought of this not to drag my own story into it. I said that I didn't think there was any favoritism going on. I was told that there was a request to Eric Rosa to allow me to film the 2000. I don't remember who's 21 or 22 behind the scenes. It was probably 21. And Rosa's response was no, he makes Catrin uncomfortable and made Catrin cry.

So we don't want them to film the behind the scenes. So, I mean, maybe I should strike. And I do believe that to be true. I have multiple sources. So maybe I should think that maybe there is some favoritism. I should.

I don't know. But I still don't think there is. And, Caleb, can you bring that screen back up? Hey, how do you think – Brian, how do you think they justify letting Katrin switch and Ellie not? I think that because I've read through these rules very specifically, I think that where it says sustained residency, that she can prove that she's been a resident of the United States for a long period of time in a single country outside of their country of citizenship. So because the only other country that she was living in in the last year was Iceland, which is her country of citizenship, I think that that's

how they're justifying the fact that even though she wasn't physically in the United States, she was home and still had a sustained residency getting mail. Her residency that she applied for was still effective during that period of time. And I have no problem with Katrin competing in North America West. Me neither. I just also think that some of the others should be able to. We're all specifically out. Do you think three years is too long? I just also think that some of the others should be able to. And we're all specifically out. Do you think three years is too long?

It's an arbitrary date that they came up with. I mean, look, we're saying, you know, yeah, I'm just saying Ellie's living in Idaho. She's competing in Idaho. Her life is in Idaho. She wants to compete in North America West. I think just think she should be able to. I think there is a drastic difference and it, it would need an exemption type process to say like, wait,

are you going here because you think you can beat everybody else? Or are you going here because you actually live here because you actually have a loved one here and a home here. And, and whatever. There's some irony there, Michael, because it's going to be easier for Ellie in Australia to,

to qualify. Isn't it? Isn't there some irony there michael because it's going to be easier for ellie and australia to to qualify isn't it isn't there some irony there i mean she just got the easiest road ever that she's had competing so and so did quite a few other australian women down there uh with cara and tia not there anymore so yeah there there definitely is it's not she's not hard off from a competition standpoint she's a hard off from a coaching standpoint her coach is coaching the best in the world, Justin Medeiros, the same weekend that Ellie is competing. They have one coach.

There's a question here from James Krikava. Why can't we just take the top scores no matter where someone is from? Everybody does the same workouts and top athletes advance. I just want to go back. We'll let Brian and Mike take a stab at this too. But they gave these three agenda points that they're trying to achieve at the CrossFit Games. And it's the strongest field.

I'll repeat it again like you're saying, James. But then they also want global representation. They don't want everyone from fucking Compton. And they want to make sure that people who got in previous years could come back a second year so we have some there's a narrative for media purposes they want it so that at least there's some recognizable names that stay in the sport.

So I think those are the three things that they claim that they're trying to do. And that third thing is going to happen anyway. I know. I agree. Sorry, I didn't mean to say I know. Why not just take the best people? Why not just be like, okay, all the events are the same at all the semifinals.

We're taking the best dudes. I can think of at least one complaint that it won't be for the people who did it in week one. We'll have a harder time than the people be disadvantaged to those who do it in week three. Correct. That's the one that was the regional issue where the last week of the regionals

they would break every record so not states countries i don't know what he's saying but i probably misspoke and patrick caught it thank you okay um oh uh patrick clark while going through the citizenship process katrin has to show a residency and they can have two places due to basically being between two states also where she pays taxes comes into play here's the thing here's the thing it's not in what it's not enough to just prove it on paper that's the problem that's what we're saying like uh are you saying that if ellie just went down and could just prove that she lived here for three years that would be enough even though if we all knew she was lying like it doesn't matter whether if katrin can show

that she's been here lived here since 2016 we saw saw her go to fucking Iceland and that's not sustained living. Well, the piece that Katrin is actually using is a residency with a plan to get citizenship because that like Caleb was showing those first, as far as like, here's the people that would likely be in the wrong country. Maybe Ellie can show residency with a plan to get pregnant. How's that?

Um, yeah. Um, be in the wrong country maybe ellie can show residency with the plan to get pregnant how's that yeah um that might be tia's reason um so with that that's what catrin i think is actually trying to use is the is the one around i'm planning to become a citizen therefore i'm staying here and have to stay here because i believe there's certain rules if you're going to try to become a citizen that you can't just be bouncing around everywhere either and then crossfit does say if you switch citizenship midway through the year then um you you don't get to switch you just i would also like to say that i'm pretty sure she said she was homesick and that's why she went back there and i think homesick also alludes to the fact of where her home is. Anyway, the main thing from this conversation is, I think it would be, you know, the simple ask is, I want to know how many people applied, how many were approved, and what they were approved for based on the four or five potential reasons. And then, because then we can look at it, we can say,

oh, and CrossFit can look at it too and say, well, we had extreme financial hardship listed as a reason. We didn't approve anyone for it. So we want to keep it on the list for next year or not. We had a residency, which was the predominant factor. And, and yeah, you know, they, you know, we can look at it and say, oh, they approved, you know, uh, 80% of the approvals were for residency. And that makes sense to us. Great. And they're, and they're in the back end. They can talk about them and say like, man, that residency was tough. Like that evaluation process was difficult. And, um, we might want to take a look at rephrasing that for next season, but just for the general public to know they approved 20 people, 10 of them were residency, five political, five visas and move on. And if

they say that they've approved someone like a high profile athlete like this for political hardship, like Roman, if they say, yeah, we approve for political hardship, no one's going to bat an eye about it. But they don't tell us why they approved him. And while it may seem obvious, he was able to travel to South Korea last year. Was it expensive? Probably. Was it risky? Probably. But he was able to do it.

And there were some other guys and girls that were not able to do it that we haven't seen show up on the exemption list yet. And I don't know if they've applied for it or not, but they're not there. Jennifer Pacheco says, where is it? Granting Ellie an exemption would be the ultimate in favoritism. I could see if you want to say granting Ellie an exception would be the ultimate in a failed system. I could understand or something like that, but in favoritism, no,

it wouldn't. I think you need to reword that. Cause I don't, cause I don't think there's, it's any favoritism that we're necessarily addressing. We're just trying to figure out how people jump through those loops. I have actually a great one. Can you pull up this,

draw your dagger one? It says, Mike, why don't NA athletes have to – this is actually a perfect question for any other region to want to say because they've made these regions separate. There are seven of them. There's not six. There's seven. So with that, why –

Can I read this question before you answer, Mike, for people who are listening? The question is, Mike, why don't North American athletes have to do anything special to switch from east to west a la Miss Spiegel? Correct. There we go. Thank you. Sorry. Not used to this. You're doing great.

I might have you on again. Oh, we'll see how it goes. There is no process. You can go move wherever you want. As long as you are starting the open like Danny is at Invictus or you're starting the open somewhere on the East Coast and you want to you want to do it there. That is all that you have to do. There's nothing. north american athlete and and we could go for as long as you want talking about how privileged the north american athletes are in this process any north and out any north american athlete can do whatever they want they could move to california they could move to orlando they could

live right next to the stadium of either place they could they could do any of that and then they could go compete there and then they could move up to madison and they can go compete there too i'm not complaining but why did they do that i'm not complaining but why what's is their rationale for that because they built it all on citizenship whatever your passport says okay so only the united states athletes can do whatever this is so it just does create another loophole that is okay well justin maderos if you wanted to, he's actually in a great spot in North America and East, and he really has no problem. But anybody like Danny, anybody like Chandler Smith, anybody like any of these can go from a place in Boston to California, and they can do this, a place in Virginia to California, and they can compete. Does this mean CrossFit isn't a game just for – Just to be clear to California, and they can compete. Does this mean across the – Just to be clear to Jennifer, that is favoritism.

That is favoritism. There's a difference. Just granting an athlete that has lived here for two years instead of three or not granting her is not favoritism. Allowing an entire region of athletes to do whatever they want and they also get 60 spots to every semi-final that they go to is a difference in favoritism versus oceania or asia or africa where they just want to get one or two people total and send them to the crossfit games

so that they have global representation by by the way in that video with uh becky harsh harsh hash harsh and uh adrian bosman and chase ingram uh someone in there talks about how they've solved this they've solved the problem and i just want to say that there was it's an imaginary problem when you solved it with more imaginary shit like like there wasn't like a there wasn't a real problem that these are all just to be clear this is crossfit it's a private company and this is a sport put on by a private company they are in no means have to do any of this they created all of it they created these rules back in nove November 9th and put them out to the athletes. They are then fulfilling those rules.

They could change them tomorrow. They could change them next year. They can do whatever they want. It's their ball. They could take it home with them and the game's over. So with that, it's hard to stand on any rule that they create and just go, well, the rule's the rule. When the person that wrote it is then explaining it and saying, go, well, the rule's the rule. When the person that wrote it

is then explaining it and saying, well, unfortunately the rule's the rule. And this is how it works. When you can just say, Hey, you made it up. You just made up this game yesterday. If you're saying that's the rule, you can change the rule. But within that, every sport has rules. There's people that manage those. And then there's people that manage those and then there's people that advise and do all the math and say hey did that work the way you think it should uh well well said uh it is their toys and their sandbox uh they also said that there's a lot that this decision isn't made by any single one person in the podcast uh adrian makes sure he lets you know that it's a group decision yeah but but like that i like like he says it like that's supposed to be a good thing uh

i i don't understand why that matters maybe give us a list of the people then maybe i'd be excited of who is involved i tell you a little bit something about how how about those people um uh becky also said that people who didn't get the exemption exemption were fine with it i want to correct her on that i think she meant what she meant to say is not a single fucking person who didn't get the exemption was fine with it no one applied for the exemption becky and you told them no you didn't get it and they were fine with it let me tell you no no one was happy no one applied for it so that they could be rejected not one i'm willing i'm willing to bet i can i can voice one athlete that is not fine with it yeah well none of them were else they wouldn't they wouldn't apply for it i mean you can't say

there's none when when we get at least i'll probably say one right right the math guy has spoken and so is the emotional guy now you have both sides of the – I want to throw this out there too. What about allowing all previous games athletes? Well, that's actually a constant rule. Some sort of exemption allowance. That's actually a constant rule. The previous games athletes to – No, because Ellie's a previous game –

Oh, you're saying games athletes. I was saying – Yeah, allow – yeah. oh you're saying games athletes i was yeah yeah allow um allow yeah so that was just a because people say to brian uh well what's your solution well i think that would help if you allowed games athletes a little more privilege again and you kill multiple birds with one stone because it also keeps the narrative going. My piece is just, it's obviously already a by-request review. They can look at an athlete and go, did you finish sixth and you want to try to finish fifth?

Or are you just trying to live with your boyfriend in the Pacific Northwest? So Ellie is going to Australia. That's the, that's in, and do we know where Katrin, David's daughter's going? California.

Well, yeah. North America West. That's in Pasadena. I'll be there. I'll be, Oh, I'm going to be there.

Front row. I'll be in the one in Orlando. I'm for sure going. I'm a hundred percent. If they'll have me after, after I say all this. So, okay. So we've talked about that. Are there any other athletes that we're concerned about or those are the, those are the two biggest high profile. I mean, I think the other big picture is future athletes.

We're going to have other people in these situations next year and the year after. And there are a little bit of clarity there about why these people are being approved or denied can help people in the future make the decision about whether I want to apply or not and have a more realistic expectation of if they're going to get approved or not. Oh, well said. Good. And I can make more shows off of it. Sebi, just thank HQ for this kind of stuff. It gives you content and something for us to watch. Dear CrossFit HQ, on behalf of the Seban podcast, I want to thank you for allowing me to spin my wheels and put my kids through jujitsu class and make new friends like Mike Halpin and hang out with old friends like Brian. And again, I actually like the system as a whole.

The exemption process, I think, needs feedback. And I think other parts of this process need feedback. But I see the reasoning that athletes need to do this. And I see the reason that CrossFit needs to really get into why they're allowing certain athletes and not allowing others. Same goes for the strength of field process that we can talk about. I actually like it. I just think there needs to be fine-tuning and understanding that it's going in certain directions. Eva S., I'm a bit behind.

Katrin has a green card, permanent residency status. In order to maintain the green card and be able to apply for the citizenship, you cannot spend more than 180 days outside the USA. Patrick... Just to be clear, she'd be asked to go to germany for a week but yeah

she would be asked that i mean that's what she'd be getting out of but yeah 180 days but anyway uh again i want to be clear i'm talking about an athlete that plays in a sport and i enjoy that sport and enjoy talking about that sport. She can do whatever she wants with her life. I don't care. And CrossFit, again, owns it and can do whatever they want. Okay. Thank you, Mr. Halpin, Brian Friend.

This case is closed. Next up, back to the semifinals, the world. Oh, I wrote it down. The world rankings. World. There's a word for that too. What is it? World – worldwide rankings. And the strength of distribution.

Strength of field. God damn it. I'm never going to get this. Strength of – okay. Strength of field. Strength of field and worldwide rankings these are the calculations what are these uh your honor i give my remaining 15 seconds to brian friend what are these what are these two elements and why are they important to who goes to the CrossFit Games? Okay.

Well, the worldwide ranking system is a formula, mathematical formula for distributing points across the competitive stages of the CrossFit Games season. There are four every year, open quarterfinal, semifinals games, and it's a two-year rolling window. So at any given moment moment there's eight potential scores or opportunities to earn points for your individual worldwide ranking score when you have that total uh you just put on the leaderboard against everyone else's total and you see where you fall if you fall within the top 100 that is good for your competitive region. If you're 101 to anything else, you are irrelevant for the strength of field for this season. So only the top 100 have an impact on the strength of field allocation, which will take place after quarterfinals.

Good so far? Yeah, beautifully said. After the quarterfinals, when we have those top 100 at that point, and those will change from now until then as athletes will emerge in the list that don't have enough competitive data points and athletes who don't compete in quarterfinals this year will be removed from the list, then they will use those 100 athletes to distribute the remaining 17 games qualifying spots amongst the seven semifinals.

And they'll do it using the haunt method. Brian, a quick interruption here for you and Mr. Halpin. Jose Manuel Zumoza Montenegro. is probably talking about the exemption process. Oh, maybe. Okay. He's behind. Okay. If it's just all the drama and I talk to athletes, there's some of them, they're not even on the top 100 list and they're supposed to be every single athlete that that talked to me this is not a concern for them at all like no one's no one's losing sleep over over this they're focused on winning the games or

making the quarterfinals or making the semifinals yeah they're not focused on it until it becomes them who somehow gets damaged by it. Also, I completely believe the help is you're talking to athletes and that they're saying that thing. But when you look back historically in every regional that we've had and in every semifinal that we had, there's a limited number of spots. And in many years, there are examples of regions around the world where all of the people in the qualifying spots make it to the games and do great. And then you wonder, well, what would have happened if they had one or two more spots? What did we miss out on by not allowing extra spots in the obviously strong regions? One of the things that I was most excited for for this is that finally we can actually have a distribution outside of the guaranteed spots to check the box of global representation, which I do think is fine,

that finally we can have the rest of the field actually be reflective of the current competitive landscape of the games athletes. Oceania this year is a great example because when the, when first the worldwide rankings system came up and even when they were first announced, many people said, finally, Oceania is going to get the spots they deserve. And in particular, they're probably talking about the women's field because we've gone over it many, many times that you just, you know,

Maddie Sturt made the games for consecutive years when they had five spots. She did pretty well at the games, finishing 19th, 20th, a couple of different years. She's getting older and better and fitter, but they reduced their spots to three and she was never able to make it back. In the meantime,

we got Julia Cato. So don't worry. In the meantime, the women that were making it from Oceania, we got Julia Cato. So don't worry. In the meantime, the women that were making it from Oceania were doing great. We had three in the top 13 last year, including the winner, but there was no way for them to earn more spots. So we thought, oh, this is going to be amazing. Now Oceania, well, Oceania turns out doesn't need any more spots this year because the top two women are not competing there. And so that depth of field is now different. And then that should be reflected accordingly for this year. The system as it is will have ebbs and flows to this, but it will, in some cases, reflect past performances that maybe shouldn't be weighed as heavily this year. And in other cases, we'll neglect athletes that should have effect,

uh, an effect on the field because they weren't able to, or didn't compete in one of the past two years. Uh, I'd like to, uh, by, by the way,

I've been saying, Oh, I didn't realize I could do that. Don't, don't get power hungry, Mike. Sorry, Shana.

It's, uh, it's get all. Sorry, Shana. It's Shana. It's Shana. Shana. Sorry. I was correct. I talked to her a bit. You did? I slapped around a little bit for calling her Shana today.

Shana. Like rhymes with banana. Shana Medeiros. Ellie trained and lived in the U.S. West in 2020. Ellie trained and lived in US in 2020 in Canada in 2021 trained at CFV

also US West thank you CrossFit Fort Vancouver she now has residency in Idaho like a driver's license or something right where living and training which is also uh the united states for people who don't know well that's that's

interesting yeah she was a michelle latondra uh athlete is that correct and i do think i do recall in some interviews that she was training up there with Mr. Vellner. Yep. Yeah, her and Fran. Yes, Mike is a bit power drunk. It's okay. Thoughts on that? Thoughts on that? God, man. I thought we were past it. Honestly, I didn't realize I could press that button. I don't want to be past it

because I think it's fucking... The Champions Month. You have to fly back to Australia when you train in Washington. It's nuts. We can maybe use this to keep talking about what Brian was on after I buy more Ellie Turner talk. That this is where Oceana, maybe Ellie will be doing very well there because they only have three spots,

but she looks like a shoe in for one of them. Is that true, Brian? She's a shoe. But to your, I mean, she's earned a spot with only three available with, you know,

a more competitive field last year. Okay. Sorry, Mr. Helping. Go on. I fact checked you helping. You were right.

So I can more of a visual guy. So if you want to bring up my screen i think i'm finally actually gonna use it caleb i know you brought it up i asked you to bring up twice and then it came back down so this is what just just to be clear this is what um this is what brian's talking about so this is the top 100 and then this is their points and then what i've pulled in that's different than than crossfit's is i've pulled in their crossfit id their country and then their their estimated region i until they go that we're sharing their crossfit id is that unethical no it's on their it's in their web address i don't yeah it's not their social security number or anything i have that too if

we need it. So then what occurs is you take, is you take that and then you put it into a calculator and then, and then you, you create this. And this is the DeHaan method that Brian was about to talk about. And this is the process in which they take the total game spots that they're allocated within the top 100. And then they put them into this machine, and it pumps out the other side saying that they get 12 spots for them, 11 spots for them, and 9 spots for them, and so on and so on. In any of the versions that I've run, and there's a few that I can show, they don't give spots to Oceania.

They don't give spots to any of the smaller athletes or i mean athletes any of the smaller regions i think you just said something really significant there and i didn't understand it repeat okay or can you help brian why why don't they get more spots they don't have enough athletes in the top 100. Okay. Remember earlier when I was, um, mentioned that there's not a problem with that. I thought Mike, maybe Mike was alluding that there was some sort of issue with that. Well, the issue is that it's very difficult in some cases for them to even have a chance to earn enough points to get into the top 100. And that's why we were kind of referencing when I said, um, you know, Adrian's advice to the athletes is get your buddies together, get to work and get inside that top 100.

That is exactly what the athletes should be trying to do. But some of them can't really do it because of the way that the that the system is designed. Are you so the implications are that you could have 10 amazing athletes in the way that works okay go ahead go ahead the way the reason that the crossfit saying it right now and they've announced it in the last couple weeks and then saying hey get to work pull yourself up by your bootstraps get all your buddies together and text them and then you're going to get more people into the field, is because that doesn't follow what they said the week before

with the worldwide rankings and how they're scored. So for the majority of athletes, they did the 21 Open and they did the 21 quarterfinals, and that can be up to 3,000 points. But for most athletes, it's going to be around 2,900 to 2,950 or right around there because they're going to be around 2,900 to 2,950 or right around there. Cause they're going to fall within the top percentiles. I'm not going to go through all the math again, like I did last time, but with that, they're going to take what they did in 21 open and quarterfinals, just under 3000 points. They're then going to sign up for the open 23,

and everybody should sign up for the open, by the way, they should sign up. They're going to sign up for the Open 23, and everybody should sign up for the Open, by the way. They should sign up. They're going to sign up for the Open, do the quarterfinals. They're going to replace those 3,000 or so points with 3,000 or so points. The only athletes that will actually move up the list are athletes that were the flash in the pan, that didn't compete in 21, or couldn't compete in 21. So the ones that will jump up the list and can actually affect the top 100 are athletes that didn't do those events and then will have 3,000 points added to their current totals. Anybody that actually had consistency over the last two years is just going to sit right where they are. Justin Medeiros has 33,460 points. If he wins the Open and quarterfinals, he will have 33,460 points.

He will not make a dent in anything. He'll stay right there. Same for Patrick Vellner. If Patrick Vellner wins both processes, he will have the exact same points against Medeiros. Do you want to say something here, Brian, before I read something that Mr. Spin wrote? No. I want to get specifically to what the implications are

about it being more... Let me tell you how I'm understanding it, and then you tell me if I'm right or wrong. What you're saying is that a region might have 10 really, really good athletes in it that deserve to go to the game, but because they don't represent well in that top 100, they'll never get more people to go to the semifinal,

and we actually won't have the best people going to the CrossFit Games. Is that what you're concerned about and we've seen that with australia and with europe yeah that's a decent generalization how been you can talk shit to me oh no it is and it's clearer actually in europe than it is in oceania oceania is smaller and an easier case but the european women are the ones being held back the most at this point let me tell you what you guys are competing with uh this um uh with mr spin which one of you one of you could be replaced at any time by mr spin just so you know okay he wrote this on the internet ready the only way for a

region to get more athletes in the top oh there we go the only way for thank region to get more athletes in the top 100 is to not have the same athletes year over year earn spots to the CrossFit Games. That's because just one year at the Games solidifies your top 100 ranking for the next two seasons. That's basically what you were explaining, right, Mr. Halpin? He was talking about the opening quarterfinals, so there's a little separate things, but continue on and then I'll help you out. Okay, thank you. The regions with more qualifying spots have a higher probability of different athletes qualifying in a two-year span, thereby increasing the number of top 100 athletes. It's a vicious cycle. What is that vicious cycle he's referring to?

Okay, so this is my main issue with the system is that it's, it's a system that's forward looking, meaning we're going to apply the worldwide ranking system to the strength of field in a cup in a month, basically for the upcoming season. And then we're going to use this worldwide ranking strength of field in looking forward into the future. However, in its origin, which is what it's in right now, it's dependent upon results from the past. And the past system was not a level playing field. And specifically when you look at the points allocations. allocations. So what Mike was saying is that all of the athletes who are competitive to be in the top 100 are going to get between 2950 and 3000 points. It's almost a negligible amount in the

two first stages of the open. The opportunity to earn points in the system are in semifinals and the games. Last year, 120 men and 120 women from North America had a chance to earn points at semifinals and or the games. That's twice as many men and twice as many women who had the chance to earn points at semifinals as the European men and women. And the European men and women had twice as many athletes, men and women and the european men and women had twice as many athletes men and women with the opportunity as the other four competitive regions which is what they're being called now so there are you know and what spin is alluding to here is that it's better to

have the turnover especially in your games qualifying spots because then you're going to have more athletes elevate into the top 100 the problem in the small regions is that the best people are so good that they're always absorbing all the points so they won't have enough athletes because the table is not uniform across all the regions either at semifinals there's a big drop off in points after first place in the smaller countries or smaller continents. And therefore, as long as they have one of the best in the world, a Roman, a Guy, a Tia, a Ricky, that's just winning, winning, winning. The other athletes won't be able to get enough points because there isn't enough opportunity. So the combination of

those two things means that the system is every single year going to be rewarding the places that have athletes with more opportunities to earn points, which is in North America first, Europe second, and then everyone else. The irony is that there's nothing they could do. If they weren't that good, if there wasn't a Guy or there wasn't a Roman Krennikoff, it wouldn't matter if it was close between two athletes is what I'm saying, because those points that they get between the open quarterfinals and semifinals are so insignificant compared to the games.

The vicious cycle is just like the game. No. Well, if you win a semifinal, it's 4,000. That means if you're the fittest in Africa, one semifinal,ifinal, it's 4,000. That means if you're the fittest in Africa, one semifinal one year, that's 4,000 points. If you take third place at the CrossFit Games, it's 4,000 points. Hey, Caleb, can you pull my screen up? I actually have all this.

Aren't those other semifinals in those regions like Africa also allocated less points? Yep, there it is right there. not yep there it is right there so the the top the top um the top finisher in all the semi-finals gets 4 000 points the drop off for for second is different across semi-finals and then the drop off for especially africa is very significant like you this this third place athlete is getting 3,500 points. This third place athlete is getting 800. They both beat 27 other people to get there. Yes. It's a different 27 people, but they both showed up, did the same events as all these other athletes beat 27 people in them at, for who could show up for that event it's not like again athletes

can just show up wherever they want and do do whatever they want so they showed up they competed this athlete gets a 880 or i'm sorry 800 points this one gets 3500 they did the same events and africa is significantly lower because again and this goes back to how they did the original minimums. They are saying that Africa only deserves one spot. And therefore, since they only have one game spot, they're only actually giving them points based on that down the line for who has the game spots. In these cases, since there's at least five, they're all getting rewarded, which then creates this cycle that Brian Spinn is talking about that says you'd be better off having these athletes trade these

points over years because that's the only way. You have to do that. Yeah, correct. He said that Africa, there's like a one in a million chance that they could actually thread the needle through what they would have to do just to get two spots at the games because of this because of how deep this or how how deep these drops are on on this on this spreadsheet so on the mic on the at the at

the micro level of the smaller continents that that's the problem is that this there's not enough opportunity for them to earn points for them to, no matter how good they are, to have an impact on the total number of spots in the top 100 to where they can actually earn game spots in the future. The other end of the spectrum, based on years of looking at this data, I don't think there's very much difference between athletes 61 and 120, especially with the women in North America compared to Europe. But in each of the last two years, those 60 women in North America have had a chance to inflate their points and the athletes in Europe have not. So it does not matter how good the European athletes are as a whole relative to North

America. They will never have as many spots in the top 100 as north american athletes with this system dude got it and it actually goes do you agree with that uh mike yeah they they can't show up they can't compete but there's no opportunity it doesn't matter how good they are how could you get behind the system at all then uh ken sykes uh ten dollars thank you brother uh well i set up until all we can hope for is is that if there's three amazing athletes that start showing up out of africa that crossfit intervenes and changes the rules again that's the only way they have to yeah yeah that you know and there and that is definitely uh possible i mean there's you know crossfit has been saying you know we want people to poke holes in this we want uh to to shore it up we want to have a better system going forward

i asked these questions in the fall and it's very similar to last season where i saw something i asked about it it was neglected and then it became a problem. It's like, why would you want to make it public and make it available to everyone and then try to solve the problems? When the problems are right in front of you four months ago and someone was asking them of you, why would you not just say, oh, that's an interesting question. Let's dive into that. Let's explore that. I want to try to explain this to people who are slow like me who have a i don't know i don't know why i'm slow but i'm gonna try to explain to

you like this the only way the way each region let's say there's how many regions are there seven regions there are seven regions and the way these seven regions are allocated game spots is through their level of competition. And the level of competition is determined by what happens at the games. So if you can't make it to the games and garner enough points to bring back home to your region to make it so you get more spots then you'll never get more spots and so if you start in a deficit you can kind of never never dig your way out of it god there would be a great animation here yeah so this this gets back to this is i'm really i'm starting to get this now yeah this is a really fucked up situation what mike going back to that other slide you had with the allocation of the points what if they just allowed um everyone to play on an equal playing field how did they come up with

these um these drops to go from 4 000 to uh 800 in africa between first and third place what if we just allocated everyone the same points would that would that at least level the playing field a little bit for each placement here i ran that one i don't know that i have it in front of me but i ran that one and it doesn't change too much but it does bring like eight athletes from some of the smaller regions back into it like the most was eight i think and it was it was oceana so it brought a few more athletes you know which probably has an effect of one spot hey do you think that that justifies – let me give a little love to CrossFit here. Do you think that justifies the fact of allowing some of these regions to people when you guys don't think that they should have two? An automatic two.

Oh, I mean, I don't know. I don't think any region should have two at this point. That wasn't nice, Machen. Sevan's starting to sound like a socialist. So just to be clear, Brian has been very focused on one version of this, and it has been give everyone one guaranteed spot and then allow all the other 33 spots to be allocated in some way so and we

can't change it all because just the data there or just i mean somebody could just start from scratch if they wanted to all the data is out there i'm happy to help you with that but in this case what i did just give each region one spot and then allocate from there based on this system yeah yeah so i'd still grab the top 100 the exact same way i i only allocated them one spot in that case two regions don't get any spots they just get their single one and then oceania and africa in this case for the women get two spots and then all the rest are still shared with the top but the top actually starts to equate like it almost gets Europe women up close to North American women. And then it does drop off with North America West, who is in third place there, regardless of who's there or what it looks like at the moment.

Which is cool. And it's cool that he did that. looks like at the moment which is cool and it's cool that he did that that does not address the the underlying issue of the fact that the north american women have had more opportunity to earn points in the past so it's still that allocation is still based on of the current worldwide ranking system but it would fix it in two years it would fix itself that way no no it wouldn't no there's still like again this is one thing there still would be an inflated number of women inside the top 100 and it'll always be like that because they have more opportunity to get points there's nothing that europe can do about

it um in this system that he ran there europe would end up with 12 spots i think he said and that's one more spot than they've gotten each of the last two years because they earned one through last chance qualifier both years. And North America is getting 22 spots, which is also one more spot. And this is what I've also been saying, is that basically all that you've done in this entire system is taking the last chance qualifier out, giving one spot to Europe and one spot to North America, probably East.

That's it. Do we need to throw out the whole east that's it do we need to throw out the whole de haan method this is we need to start from scratch is what you're saying this is it's a it's a fine method for allocating like that it's a fine method seven no the method is not the problem we've said a few times the method is not the problem the de haan method i've done this in with some other stuff is fine and it hits, it will distribute the spots. Well, if, if this, the body that it's evaluating is actually a representation of the competitive landscape, but it's not because the system is built upon a previous system

that had nothing to do with competition. Yeah. And so, and so back to that, that breakdown, it really is falling in two ways. The regions that can't get the points. Well, there's, there's the three phases, right? There's quarters open and quarterfinals, which used to just be the open. Then there's semifinals, which used to be regionals. And then there's the games, right?

So with open and quarterfinals, nearly every athlete that's really competing within this is all getting the same points. So it's a wash then there's the semi-finals and there's drastic differences between what the points are for the smaller regions and then what they are for the larger regions and again those athletes that are now getting those points all are games athletes and then there's the games and if you make the games and you win, it's 10,000 points. But if you don't win, if you're 39th or 40th, you get 25 points and zero points. So the scenario that's currently happening is the winner of Africa, yes, gets 4,000 points. But then they show up to the games and they get zero.

The second place in Asia gets, I think, 1,800 points. Oh, I haven't heard. They get 2,000 points, and then they show up to the games and they get 25 points. So they're not able to actually get people to the games that can compete, which is one problem, which is the sort of the global representation problem that we started with. And then they're not actually able to accrue points in just a way to get better athletes competing there. So the system's broken for especially Africa, but the other smaller regions like South America and like Asia, where we already have seen an athlete leave Asia and we could see an athlete leave South America and like Asia, where we already have seen an athlete leave Asia and we could see an athlete leave South America.

They're not going to be doing well either if they're just left with these athletes. So then the strength of field number, right? It's the strength of field number can never be built up in these weak regions. You have to have at least five to break the 17 round process. You have to have at least five. You You have to have at least five.

You have to have at least five what? Five athletes in the top 100 to get awarded one spot when you get down to the 17th round. Wow. That's a strong... For those of you who are falling behind in this conversation like me, that's a really important data point. And how many does South America

have? Do they just have one? Like, does anyone besides Guy break the top 100? Yeah. Sorry, you broke up, Mike. Who else? They have another guy? Augustine Ricalme. So they have two.

So they need three more. Augustine Ricalme. Yeah. Oh, they're screwed. They're screwed. And again, they only can send two people so those other three are already getting a thousand points or less for doing the semi-final getting third fourth and fifth and then they're they're done for the season they can't get any more points and then the other

parts of their season they're they're washing in and out 3,000 points. We've lost the chat. Fuck those guys. It's Heidi's phone. Brian, bear with me here and give me one more shot at this. If this method is usable, what would it look like from the start? If you were going to use this, uh, the haunt method, um, how would you and Mike launch it? Oh, I don't necessarily want to speak for Mike, but, but basically what I've been saying

is that the system, and I think someone did acknowledge this in the chat, the system needs to start with a blank slate, you know, and you, and you have to, and maybe it means that, you know, two years from now, we'll actually have a meaningful data set that we can evaluate. But, um, you know, I've said it for months to years. Now, if you build a system going forward off of, uh, of something from the past, there's going to be inherent problems with it. And, and the small, the small, uh small countries, these problems are real and were kind of, I think, unnecessary. They were introduced by the system, but there were problems that were inherent before the system came into play to begin with that I think were avoided. Yeah, this, Mike said. And so I ran a study because I know that the European women have been competitive against the North American women for years.

But in every iteration of the CrossFit Games, the best they've ever done has been given half as many spots to compete at the Games. And in the system that we're in now, it's going to be exactly the same thing. So I took a look at a few different things. I put up on my Instagram the other day that relative to the number of available positions to compete at the games, the European women have consistently outperformed the North American women. So if you look at the bottom there, the percentage in the top 20 out of the 21 athletes, women, the North American had last year, 10 made the top 20. That's 47%. The European women only had 11. Seven of them made the top 20. That's 63%. In the previous year, it was exactly the same for the North American women, 47%. The European women were even better because Annie was in the field, Katrin was in the field, and they had nine out of 11, 81%. If you scroll to the right, you'll see a bad example from 2020 when the system was completely different. But if you look at the right, you'll see a bad example from 2020 when the system was completely different.

But if you look at the previous iterations where, again, the European women have a massive disadvantage in terms of available game spots, but the women that they have there are outperforming them on average, 57% compared to 42%. And if you go back before that, it was 100%. In 2017 and 2016, all five and all six women that made the Games out of Europe were making the top 20, whereas less than half percent of the North American women were. in every model that we've run built upon the past system, the American women are going to get between 20 and 23 spots and Europe's going to get 10 or 11, maybe 12, which is still going to be half. They're still going to outperform the North American women, but they're not going to have enough points banked to do anything about it in the future. So I just did a couple of experiments because one of the things that you could do,

and it's not perfect. There are definitely problems with this is you could just take the quarterfinals this year as your baseline. And if you took the quarterfinals this year as your baseline, and I think that Mike, where's that thing that I sent you today? Someone has it, right? If you just take, if you just took last year's as a baseline, I'm zooming on the middle section there. For the men at the top in the middle at quarterfinals in 2022, 60 of them were from North America, 23 for Europe, 6, 7, 2, and 1. And the game's distribution spots, just on a basic math,

I just took 40 spots divided by by 0.6, and rounded it up accordingly when needed to. 23, 9, 3, 3, and 1, and 1. That's for the men, just based on last year's quarterfinals. And guess what? It looks almost identical to what you're going to get this year in this complicated method. Now, if you scroll down to the women from 2022 quarterfinals, this is what highlights exactly what I've been suspicious of. 45 North American, 40 Europe, almost the same. But we will not see that in any other model because the points make it impossible for Europe to flex the fact that they're just as competitive. And then your games distribution spots would have been 18 and 6 and 2, 3, 1. And maybe you take one from wherever to give Africa one.

This is just a net model, not with any minimums. But in the model that we have this year, where North America is actually split into two separate competitive regions, maybe they'd have 10 spots and eight spots where Europe would have 16. North America is still getting equal representation at the games as Europe, because they're just as good. They are not twice as good. And every study that I've ever done demonstrates it. At least if it's going to be biased, it's biased towards the right country. Mike, when you look at this, any thoughts, feelings, assessments on what Brian just said? I think I've said a lot.

But, yeah, this just continues to drive it home. We do talk about Oceania a lot. There are certain athletes that have been there and done their time, and maybe this is the year that some of those athletes get to shine a little bit, at least with the spots that they are going to get. But Europe women is really the focal point of most of this, and they're not getting the representation that they need at all. We should put all these spreadsheets in a balloon and fly it over Alaska so they can be shot down.

Fair enough. What happens? So, so there's no last chance qualifier at all. That's been removed. Open quarterfinals, semifinals games. All right.

I guess, I guess there's nothing we can do. We're just going to just watch this just play out. Right. Yeah. And so, and I mean, and that's what we're left with. So we know what we have done for the past week is. Well, let me let me say that we're not we're going to see it play out and there's going to be some mathematical problems also. Don't think that this is going to be flawless by any means. No, it's not. No, that I mean, that's what I was about to say.

So we've we've looked over the past week or two since they've released some more information. We've run some models. We've had conversations. We've asked questions. And we found some holes, which is it is what it is. There's very unlikely that they're going to address these situations for the 2023 season. I do think there's a chance that they'll address some of them for next season. But in the meantime, you know, we have to accept it as the model that is. And like Mike said, the athletes, they're choosing to play. The rules are written and the rules

include clauses for the organizing body to make its own, to change its mind as it goes. If I'm an athlete, I'm not necessarily putting a lot of stock into what Adrian said about gathering my buddies and trying to get inside the top 100. All I'm focusing on is okay. I gotta, you know, I gotta get to the semifinal. There's going to be X number of spots available and I gotta get my side,

myself inside the line. Same as it's always been. At the end of the day, it seems like the biggest influence is something that we didn't even talk about. It's where there's the most affiliates and most open registrants. When it comes to the minimums from two years ago, that seems to still be the criteria that are being implored into a system that is otherwise billed as being based on competitive excellence. Just to be clear, those haven't changed since the time that they created them and no longer actually valid if you if you just did the minimums as they're supposed to be given

europe would have more spots meaning there's been an influx of of crossfit affiliates in europe over the last two years it hasn't been accounted for right wow if you look at it even the even the data that crossfit's putting out on social media every day, Spain is blowing up with affiliates. If you just based it on affiliate registrations or affiliate totals, like just total number of affiliates, Europe would have more spots than they're actually getting right now. I would love to see that. Hey, asshole.

I was having an amazing hair day, and i looked at him here twice today and thought i looked handsome you fuck that you fucking wreck me because as soon as you call me an english bulldog i see it i do look like an english bulldog you dickhead you're not supposed to say shit that sticks i just spent fucking 40 years getting over the size of my nose now i look like an english bulldog that was a fucking short-lived. Damn. Did we talk about the tiebreaker? You have 30 seconds to talk about the tiebreaker,

Mr. Friend. What's he talking about? In the DeHaan method, there is a potential for ties. And if a tie comes up, they say that they will reward the competitive region who has fewer spots. Therefore, in your balance of the three things they're pursuing,

when it comes to the tiebreaker, they're favoring the global representation over the competitive field. So you're saying if North America, or you're saying, let's pick two. If Oceania and Europe both have a strength of field number of 38,250, how do they do the tiebreaker? Mike? Whoever's weaker? How can it be whoever's weaker?

We just said it was the tie. The first one is who has less allocated spots. And the second tiebreaker is, well, and there's cases where they could actually tie then again and in that case it's whoever has the highest ranked athlete within the region so it kind of flips it goes from whoever's the weakest to whoever's the strongest and then uh i didn't i didn't know which one patrick was talking about but the they they also don't have ties in the top 100. So the top 100 will only be 100 total athletes, not 100 rank.

So with that, actually right now in the one that they put out for the women, there is an athlete that is not listed as number 99 because I don't know what math they did or what tiebreaker it was but she's just not listed and that's because they they changed it with a tiebreaker they're only going to have 100 athletes i did talk to dave eubanks and before they release the next rankings they will confirm what that tiebreaker actually is. But there could be athletes that are on the bubble. I want to make a prediction here that this DeHaan thing doesn't last more past 2025.

And that's actually the problem with this entire process is it's with the two-year look back and with the setup that it has, it needs at least two years of just running it through the system to actually show athletes cared about doing all of these events and actually did them. And that the system actually shows itself out, not based on what they had done before the system was created. So it has to go at least till 2025.

And the way it's being talked about or built is that it should go well past that. Obviously, if you look back at the last five years of the CrossFit games and look at how people got to the games that changed nearly every year until the last three years now. So if they're going to stick with something, they need to stick with it.

They can make fine tweaks, but they can't drastically change the process. Otherwise, they will throw out this entire process in doing so. Can you guys hear my dog barking? No, I can hear something running. But it might be here. That's my mind. but it might be here that's my mind oh that's uh that's uh one of uh brian's clients on the air runner in his living room and and maybe i'll use this to promote the show that you had this

morning as well as the show that you're gonna have tomorrow morning uh is the next thing they have to look at is who's actually showing up to compete. Because as you talked about for a good 30 minutes this morning, there's quite a few athletes that are injured, taking time off, focusing on coaching, joining a team, or just doing something else. So with that, I've started to run analysis, but it's hard to actually look at so far. We've just had three big announcements on the women's side today alone that could actually change who is in that top 100 and who's not. And CrossFit will have to look at athletes when they're doing the next ranking to get in an Annie Thorisdottir who wasn't ranked when they did this or get in a Sam Cornway who wasn't ranked. Because if you look at Brian's post, there's quite a few athletes

that he's ranked that have an NR next to their name. That means CrossFit didn't rank them. But if they show up and compete, they're going to jump into that top 100 or at least be close to the bubble and may actually affect some of this. But again, for the smaller regions, they have to jump in with quite a few people into the top 100 to actually push the needle past getting even just one more spot for them. And anyone who is there anything else you'd like to say, Mr. Friend? I don't know. Do you have another question? I don't. Do you have another question?

I don't. I think Dave Eubanks is going on with Barbell Spin tomorrow, and I think he's going to ask him some tough questions. I'm looking forward to seeing those answers. Good plug. But don't watch that live. But just so you know, I just want you guys to know, anyone who wants to understand, here you go. We just need them with the two.

1.5 and one transfer over, right? Mm-hmm. What's the higher number this round? Two. You got it, right? So now, once again, two wins. They get three additional spots. And if we were to finish here, very simply, you can see, okay, EU.

Very simply. It's very simple. It's very simple. This percentage here has earned three additional spots. Oceania has earned one additional spot, and Asia has earned no additional spots. And if this were the end of it, that would be it. We can continue this. Yeah, we can continue this. This map on, as far as we need to fill up the number

of spots we have to allocate. There you go. Thank you, guys. I appreciate it. I am very excited about tomorrow's show. I like the top 100 best women in CrossFit, the official worldwide ranking. Can we call it that? Do they have that shit trademarked?

What do we call ours? Power rankings. Brian Friend power rankings. I just wanted to say right now, CrossFit, if you would like to use any portion of my show and your future broadcasts from tomorrow's Power Ranking show, you're absolutely welcome to use them. I would be honored. Unlike you, I'm not an asshole and file copyright infringements on people. Mr. Halpin, I know you're a peaceful and loving man, and it's hard for you to, thank you for balancing me out and all my hostility. Sure. Anytime. We'll see you guys in 11 hours. No,

less than that. 10 hours and 28 minutes. And then, and then we have another show tomorrow night also, which I'm pretty excited about. Uh, Mr.R. Howell will be coming on. We will be announcing the open workouts for you based on Nostradamus Howell. And just so you know, it was during our show last year that in the middle of the show, we were able to get the URL for the open and hack into the open workouts and release them before everyone else. And God willing, that will happen again. Do you remember that, Brian? Yeah.

That show was fucking great. I remember when you called Dave about it. That was pretty good. Oh, my goodness. It's going to be hard to top last year. Okay. Love you guys. Mr. Beaver. Thank you.

See you guys in 10 and a half hours. Bye-bye.