Anyone who has some experience in the Open knows by now, the complaint year after year is always the same: the scores are never right.
Yeah… because apparently the standards required in one box are not the same as those required in the others. There are those who participate in the Open for fun and, therefore, do not take it seriously, but there are many athletes who instead count a lot.
There have always been complaints about that CrossFit® would have been less strict with the most famous athletes than others. And to think that, in the past, we didn't have access to athlete videos, which were sent directly to the CrossFit® company.
But with the current times, many Crossfitters have realized that they can earn a lot of money by posting their videos on Youtube, especially if they have a lot of followers.
By doing so, they have opened up the possibility of analysis for others… and this is where it comes into play Andrew Hiller (@hillerfit), nicknamed the "batman" of CrossFit®.
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Who is Andrew Hiller?
Hiller is a CF athlete who qualified for the semifinals last year but received a high penalty during the semifinals for failing to stretch elbows during the thruster.
And you know what? In announcing the winners of 22.3, Mallory O'Brien and Scott Tetlow, CrossFit® released their videos.
By doing so it was possible to verify that, in reality, most of the repetitions of the thrusters of the two athletes would not be valid for the same reason!
And this was just one of Andrew's analyzes of hers Youtube channel with the purpose of draw more attention to all the injustices of the Open.
He has targeted not only famous people like Tia-Clair Toomey (22,2) or Dani Speegle (22,3), but every athlete he found online.
Here is who is the overseer of the Open, the quarterfinals and the like! The CrossFit® Batman against the no rep! And if you go and see the amount of comments under his posts you will be amazed!
Andrew Hiller's video analysis
In his relentless search, it must be said that he found videos that did not exist; several athletes who do 22.1 and 22.2; cameras that don't film everything; athletes dressed in black on a black background (which makes it impossible to see if they are breaking parallel or not); athletes who leave the film during training and so on.
E why is it important to report these mosquitoes? It is important because many people take the Open seriously and are proud of their achievements.
If we don't like it when we see someone standing in the garage, imagine something we pay dearly to participate!
Andrew Hiller states that his goal is not to go against a particular athlete, but to improve the whole process.
And this is appreciable.
Recently, in fact, CrossFit® itself published a long list of athletes who have been punished for Quarterfinals. Among these, some famous names emerge, such as Dani Speegle, who has undergone a score adjustment.
Whether this had anything to do with Andrew Hiller's videos and the community movement or not, we don't know yet. But the truth is that he's bothering a lot of people, no doubt about it.
It seems normal to us to think that it is complicated, perhaps almost impossible, to review all the videos of all the athletes. However, CrossFit® could think of a different strategy, such as requiring all athletes to upload their videos and letting the thousands of people taking the judges course judge.
Another idea could be to increase the value of quarter memberships, in order to limit the number of members. Obviously, however, we do not like this idea very much, as it would affect many athletes with little budgets and sponsorships.
The fact is that something has to change! Maybe the athletes themselves should recognize their mistakes, right? An example is David Hippensteel, an athlete who has won the Games more than 3 times in the masters category, who has decided to withdraw from the competition after sending a video deemed invalid by Andrew, even without a final message from CrossFit®.
It is not about being vindictive or thinking that people are acting maliciously. But many judges "Let it go" some standards to certain athletes and others not.
Then when you see big names with bad technique, the loser is sport!
It is worth noting that our sport is still "new" compared to other sports such as tennis, football and the like and much can be done and improved.
Drawing attention to this issue is positive and important. Calling for more transparency is extremely essential.
And what do you think?