“As soon as they said it was going to be at the ranch, which is a really small location, I thought immediately there was going to be a cut,” Haynes said. He mused there might be an online qualifier, which would not have suited his strengths at all, as the workouts tend to differ from the Games and sanctional competitions, where Haynes comes into his own.

“So, I thought, I wont make it if that happens,” he said. “I hoped, maybe they’d invite the top 30 from last year. I was 27th. Which would round out to be 30 to 40 men and 30 to 40 women, with the Open and sanctionals winners [as some overlap]. I hoped, but also I wasn't going to cry and bitch and moan about it if I didn't get the invite.”

Even if Haynes had somehow won an invite, who’s to say he would have been able to travel to the US, with travel restrictions still in place. With quarantine periods in Hong Kong for returnees, it might have turned into a six- to eight-week round tip.

“I did selfishly want it to go ahead, and I did selfishly want the invite because I'd be training for it for 12 months, but it's not like my world is collapsing around me,” he said.

Haynes compared his strife with the many other sports affected.

“You got to think, if the Olympics is getting cancelled, the Premier League, the Euros, how can the CrossFit Games go ahead? It's not yet a professional sport. There's professionalism about it, but it's not professional. It's hard to justify to yourself going to an event like that when the rest of the world is on lockdown,” he said. “I feel for the Olympians who have trained for four years.”

One regret he does have is not taking the chance to compete when he had it. There were sanctionals around the world, but Haynes did not compete in any. He signed up for the Asia CrossFit Championships in Shanghai and a sanctional in Egypt, but both were cancelled. He missed Pandaland in Sichuan out of choice.

Haynes said it is because he is very wary of burning out by packing too much into a single season. He feels ready to compete at the Games, even without entering a lot of other competitions.

“But there is only so much work you can put in behind closed doors. You work to see improvement in yourself, but also to get self-gratification when you compete and perform,” he said.

“I wanted to continue the momentum from 2019, take that momentum forward a) as an athlete and b) as a figure, through social media and the sport. The more exposure you get, the better. That was a bit of a tough pill to swallow. But apart from that, it is what it is.”

Next season, as long as he wins his ticket to the Games early via The Open again, he will enter three or five sanctionals.

“I don't know where the ability to see the silver lining comes from,” he added. “I do have quite a few holes, like I'm rubbish at The Open, so it just gives me another three or four months. Since I started CrossFit, I haven't had an off-season because the season is so hectic. Now I have that down time, I can focus more on what I need to focus on, and fingers crossed it pays off.”