We're back for one final week of Regionals. You can get some of my thoughts on the first two weeks of Regionals on the
podcast I posted earlier this week. Every year, we seem to have a few seemingly shoe-in athletes not make the Games, but last week was full of surprises. There have been 18 men and women from last year's top 15 at the Games who have competed at Regionals in the first two weeks, and six (33%) have failed to qualify. Those types of athletes generally get a 70-85% chance of qualifying in my modeling, so this is a bit atypical. Two of those, Josh Bridges and Valerie Voboril, have each qualified at least three times in the past.
On the flip side, we've seen some athletes finally break through this year (e.g. Elijah Muhammad) or get back to the Games (e.g. Spencer Hendel). Hendel is one of the few athletes to qualify for the Games, fail to qualify for multiple Games in a row, then qualify again.
I'm sure we'll have some surprises in store in week 3, so it should be a fun one to watch. Enjoy the weekend everyone!
(Note: West Regional predictions revised 5/30 to remove Ben Stoneberg and Emily Carothers, who are not competing. All other athletes' chances increased as a result.)
According to last night's prediction show Ben Stoneberg (injury) and Emily Carothers (family focus) are not competing. I wonder why they have them on the leaderboard if they didn't accept their invitations.
ReplyDeleteInteresting. I put all these predictions together Wednesday evening and didn't end up watching the show. Tonight I'll try to revise them with those two removed, since they are two pretty big favorites (~85%) removed from the field. I wonder how long HQ had known that and why they didn't just remove them from the leaderboard.
DeleteWas Stacie Tovar really included in that less than 4% category? Glad to see she made it back
ReplyDeleteWell, as I'm looking at it now, technically she is but that must have been a mistake with one of the lookups I had on the data. She probably should have been in the 25-35% category with Ritchey and Kile. Good catch, I usually don't miss the big name athletes but it happens sometimes I guess.
DeleteI'm noticing Lindy Barber is also absent. I must have just pasted something in wrong, because returning athletes with a pretty decent showing in the prior year should have a good shot based on this model. That's annoying. I'll look into it more when I get off work.
DeleteWell, I just took a look, and in fact Tovar and Barber were treated just like all other athletes here. Tover was just outside the top 100 worldwide in last year's cross-Regional rankings (after adjustments for which week she competed in), which put her in a lower group in the model than athletes like Grace Dresher, Jessica Schulz, etc. who were between 50 and 100. She and Barber were each exactly at 4%.
DeleteTypically for former Games athletes who sit just on the edge of one of those buckets, I just bump them up into the next bucket, but I neglected to do that here. However, even if I had, it would have still put each of them at around 15% if I re-ran the entire model. If I widened the bucket to go from 50-150, that whole group of athletes would be around 11%. So for both of them to qualify, based on past history, was a bit of a surprise.
Good stuff, beat the percentages even at the age of thirty. Not nearly impressive as Maddox continuing to qualify in his later 30's, but this sport is dominated by the young.
DeleteAs someone who recently turned 30 and is now feeling about 10 years older than I did at 29, I can't believe that Maddox is still performing at this level at his age (37, I think). And it's not like he's someone who entered the sport late - he's been at a top level for 6 years now, and that's a lot of pounding on the body. Akinwale is another one still hanging near the top in the mid- to late-30s.
Deleteyea I hear you, I'm 33 and feel every day of it. He played football prior to CF right? Amazing how his body had held up and there doesn't seem to be hardly any dropoff.
DeleteIs there a combined super regional leaderboard posted anywhere?
ReplyDeletehttp://www.crossfitregionalshowdown.com/leaderboards/women
ReplyDeleteThis site has been around for 2-3 years I believe. I typically grab all the results from there and use them for my analyses going forward.