Opinion | CrossFit 2021: what we know and what we don’t
- Once again, CrossFit’s new season will be drastically different than the previous one, but this is not a bad thing
- The 2021 season will feature a host of new events and an entirely different qualifying structure for the CrossFit Games
In mid-December, CrossFit headquarters released a skeleton of what the new CrossFit Games format looks like and first off is the 2021 CrossFit Open.
New CrossFit owner Eric Roza has been talking about the resurgence of the Open since he took over and the goal is to have half a million participants register. It seems a couple of changes in particular could help them reach that goal.
The Open had been advertised as starting on February 18, which has now been pushed back to March 11. It has always been at least five weeks long but is now reduced to three.
The Open has qualified athletes for different competitions in different seasons and this year about 10 per cent of all participants will qualify for a new “quarter-finals” stage.
Pushing the start date back by nearly a month gives people extra time after the holidays to prepare, while simultaneously extending the off-season for elite athletes. And, for this year in particular, it buys a few more weeks as the world still struggles to contain the Covid-19 pandemic.