Although New Zealander Laura Clifton qualified for the CrossFit Games last season, she says the 2021 edition will feel different, in a good way. The competition was pushed online last year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, with 30 men and women competing virtually from their home gyms. A finale, at the famed CrossFit Ranch in Aromas, California, saw only five men and women each make the trip to the in-person finale. This year, the 2021 NOBULL CrossFit Games (July 27-August 1) will be in a packed venue, the Alliant Energy Center in Madison, Wisconsin, and Clifton could not be more pumped even though she will be making the long journey to compete. “It feels super real and exciting this year,” said the 26-year-old, who came 26th last year after stage one of the finals. “And that’s what I’m most looking forward to. Soaking up the true CrossFit Games atmosphere and the environment, it’s going to be epic.” Forty men, women and teams will compete and CrossFit has already named a number of country champions: one of them Clifton, a New Zealand native now living in Australia. “My fiancée and I opened a CrossFit affiliate in Melbourne during the lockdown last year which was challenging but rewarding at the same time. Will Icelandic CrossFit star ‘BKG’ win the 2021 CrossFit Games? “To be honest, it was so bloody hectic but our community was so supportive, which made us so much more determined to get through the other side and get the gym back open for everyone.” Clifton actually found her way to the sport via school, during a class in 2017 at the Toi Ohomai Institute of Technology in Tauranga, finishing her Bachelor of Sport and Recreation. “I had always been interested in CrossFit and saw the CrossFit Games one year in a university lecture, but wasn’t able to fit it in or afford it. But once I moved to Australia I decided to give it a try and fell in love with it from the very first session. “I loved the fact that it tested your abilities in all facets – weightlifting, gymnastics endurance and how good it felt to be fit but also lift heavy things.” View this post on Instagram A post shared by L A U R A C L I F T O N (@lozamarie) Clifton also recalled one of her toughest workouts where she found herself unable to finish, but said that is the beauty of CrossFit, finding one’s athletic limits and then attacking them. “I still have PTSD from being stuck at the bottom of a legless rope climb staring up at it in a final and not being able to complete it. Such a debilitating feeling.” Kiwis are known for another sport, rugby, where the men’s and women’s teams, in both 15s and sevens, are perennial contenders every year. Clifton said if she hadn’t found her way into CrossFit, she most likely would have found her way into New Zealand’s national pastime. “I’d like to say I’d be playing rugby at a professional level if I wasn’t doing this.”