Port Elizabeth CrossFit athletes are in the Mother City to do battle against some of the country’s toughest competitors in the CrossFit Fittest in Cape Town (FiCT) 2019.
The event, which is sanctioned by CrossFit Inc, will see not only local but also international athletes compete against each other, with the male, female and team winners being awarded a ticket to the 2019 Reebok CrossFit Games in Madison, Wisconsin, later in the year.
Local CrossFit box, CrossFit Algoa, have a team of four athletes competing at the event and will be raring to pit their skills against the best athletes of their sport at the three-day event, starting on Thursday.
CrossFit Algoa head coach and team captain David Levey – who was travelling to Cape Town with his teammates Bob Yuill, Anje Adams and Roxy Stottelaar – said the team had qualified through the online qualifiers.
During this period, in November 2018, teams were tasked with completing a series of workouts which then had to be submitted via video for analysis.
“The qualifying process was similar to the Open, which is the starting qualifier for the Reebok CrossFit Games, where we had to do four or five workouts,” Levey said.
“Each member of the team had to complete the workouts during the qualifiers, and anyone who replaced a team member would have had to do at least one workout.
“So if you have seven people entering, they take your four best people and give you a placing.
“If you then have to replace a team member, the incumbent athlete must have done at least one of the workouts.”
Asked about their preparation for the event, Levey said he had developed a competitive training programme called the Always Fit League, which he said was used to train specifically for CrossFit competitions, for athletes at his box but also for all competitive CrossFit athletes around the country.
“We train specifically for CrossFit competitions, or CrossFit-type competitions, which is what we call general physical preparedness fitness training, which is some of the best training to do and to be prepared for the unknown,” he said.
Levey has graced the CrossFit FiCT stage on numerous occasions over the past decade, but said this would be his teammates’ first taste of the competition.
He said Eva Thornton, the 2018 Reebok CrossFit Games champion in her age group, was meant to be part of the team, but due to injury had to reconsider her entry.
“I am not going to put any pressure on the team to get a placing, so the main thing I focus on and tell them is to enjoy their training and to have fun.
“The team is fairly young, so they will not be expected to do stuff that will put them at risk or jeopardise their health, so that pressure is off.
“We are going there to have fun, and that will give us our best score, in any case.”