I’m going to go out on a limb here and make a dramatic prediction when it comes to the women’s category of the 2021 CrossFit Open. Australia’s Tia-Clair Toomey will capture her fifth straight title, and she will do it convincingly. Excuse the sarcasm, but anyone who knows anything about CrossFit knows Toomey is a champion, a superstar and downright unbeatable. Betting against her is almost as foolish as betting against five-time men’s champion Mat Fraser, who is also Toomey’s training partner. This wasn’t always the case with the Aussie, though. Toomey’s story involves a dramatic mindset shift that took place right after the 2016 CrossFit Games, where she came second in the world for the second straight year. She looked to be the bridesmaid when it came to the CrossFit Games, close but no cigar. If you want to watch someone turn from a contender into a champion in dramatic fashion, there’s some fun homework CrossFit fans can dive into. Watch 2017’s Fittest on Earth: A Decade of Fitness , a documentary about the 2016 CrossFit Games, and more specifically, watch Toomey and how she holds herself both as a person and a competitor. The Australian appears to be her own biggest opponent, as she is caught on camera verbally doubting herself as her coach and husband Shane Orr tries to convince her that she is, in fact, one of the best CrossFitters on the planet. Should CrossFit be included in the Olympics? Those Games would go to Iceland’s Katrin Davidsdottir, who captured her second consecutive title and looked to be the sport’s defining female athlete of the era. Then, something happened during the off-season and training build-up between the 2016 and 2017 CrossFit Games. Toomey came back a different person. The subsequent documentary about the 2017 CrossFit Games, The Redeemed and the Dominant: Fittest on Earth , shows an about face for the ages. Toomey is no longer meek, unsure of herself and constantly doubting her ability and talent. She is a warrior, a champion, and blows the competition away with a performance for the ages. There’s lots of reasons this could have happened, but the most likely explanation is that training with Fraser rubbed off on Toomey. Fraser’s mentality, that second place is no better than last, clearly had an impact on the Australian, and she has a new mentality that sees her standing on the cusp of five straight titles and looking, again, like the out and out favourite. Full credit to Davidsdottir, if Toomey hadn’t found a way to turn her mental game from a liability to an asset, the Icelandic star may have been the one approaching her fifth title. But that is not the CrossFit reality we live in, and as far as the women’s division goes, no one has found an answer to Toomey since 2017. CrossFit’s Mat Fraser and Rich Froning not speaking Fellow Icelandic CrossFit star Sara Sigmundsdottir’s career trajectory has followed a similar path as the other two. She came third in 2015 and 2016, and fourth in 2017. But where Toomey went left, Sigmundsdottir went right. She dropped off drastically after that, finishing 37th in 2018, and 19th in 2019 before coming 21st at the scaled down 2020 CrossFit Games. Sigmundsdottir has dealt with injuries , which always makes it hard to be a perennial champion or even contender, but many within the CrossFit world say her biggest hurdle has always been between the ears . Full credit to Toomey, as this shift is not easy, because if it was, everyone, including Sigmundsdottir, would have done it. We’ve all watched stars become superstars and contenders become champions, and it usually involves a trial by fire process. The NBA’s LeBron James is a perfect example. James, wallowing away in Cleveland, left his hometown team to sign with the Miami Heat in 2010. At first his superstar-studded team were treated as villains, but James soon shed the negative moniker and lifted the Heat to back-to-back titles starting in 2011. Cast as abandoning the team he grew up watching, James went through a roller-coaster emotional process that saw him come out the other side as a new man and a better basketball player. He found his love for the game again, and in surrounding himself with fellow champions like Dwyane Wade and Chris Bosh, who were similarly hell-bent on winning at all costs, he became a champion. Toomey found something extraordinary during the off-season between the 2016 and 2017 Games. Now she has added Brooke Wells, who finished fifth at the 2020 CrossFit Games and announced late last year she will be coached by Orr, to her inner circle. Wells is looking for some of that secret sauce herself. Surrounding yourself with champions definitely helps, but at the end of the day, as Toomey has shown, becoming one is always a solo battle between one’s own self and the face in the mirror.