Athletes Justin Medeiros and Ellie Turner have shared a video on YouTube channel by Justin Medeiros to explain what happened to them at the 2023 CrossFit ® Games.
Medeiros, twice Fittest on Earth, was the favorite to win the CrossFit ® Games but finished 13th, while Ellie, first in the Oceania Open, was eliminated from the competition after the cut on Friday night.
Many were amazed by the performance of the two athletes, but the answer was not long in coming… Here's what the two athletes said.
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The words of Justin Medeiros and Ellie Turner
Justin Medeiros:
Fittest Man On Earth of 2021 and 2022; everyone thought that he would have won his third title or that he would have, at least, been on the podium.
To the surprise of many, Medeiros finished the season in 13th place. He explained what happened like this:
“Coming into the Open, I obviously hadn't done as well as the previous year, but I had nothing to worry about. By reaching the quarter-finals a few weeks later, I wanted to show that I was still in the race."
Medeiros explains that in the run-up to the Games he was under a lot of pressure and doubted his abilities:
“I still don't know why, but I've felt a lot more pressure than in other years (…) I know I'm doing everything I can, but there are many things I should have done that I'm not doing. I think coming to the Games with all this pressure on me, the doubt has crept into my mind."
Ellie Turner:
At the end of the Open, Ellie Turner has become Australia's strongest woman, but this year he was hoping for something more.
After ranking XNUMXth in the world at the Open, she hoped to go much further at these Games.
This year was his third participation and finished 31st overall, after Friday night's cut. The reason, according to Turner, was the change he's made in his life over the past year.
The Australian moved to the US at the start of the season and this had an impact on her performance:
“Moving from Australia to the United States had a bigger impact on me than I thought it would, and then there's always a little accident and stuff like that here and there. They are small setbacks that make things difficult."
For Turner, the problem arose during the “Alpaca Redux” event, when he felt something in his back during the kettlebell clean & jerk in the first few reps.
“I went back to kettlebells and thought, This is not good, this is going to be really bad, so it was a war. At that point I didn't know if I should have retired or not, the only thing I knew was that I wouldn't be able to perform the rest of the woods of the weekend”.
Her coaches said it was up to her to decide whether or not to retire. During the Ski-Bag competition, she mostly used her legs to spare her back.
“The decision was pinch (made with three fingers) emotionally and I was very emotional when I stepped onto the floor, knowing that this was my last competition at Madison."
Here is the video released by the couple [in English]
