CrossFit Quarterfinals Workout 3 – Most Falsifed Leaderboard Ever? [The Unintentional Cheaters]

[outlook2018]

TLDR: CrossFit put „shuttle runs” in the Workout #3 from Quarterfinals and set rep scheme 4-8-12-16-12-8-4. On the floor plan each RUNNING SECTION IS 25 FEET LONG – BUT ONE REP IS 50 FEET – and thats the problem, because lots of folks didn’t read carefully workout description. Leaderboard is chaos, youtube videos and data profs that. CrossFit screwed this up and propably won’t fix this mess.

After reading conversation about counting shuttle runs posted at weekend by @mordekizo I spend lazy sunday on checking that case and I’m thrillered how fragile is this workout and whole CrossFit HQ Competition system.

Initially I briefly scroll through the leaderboard and that gives me first thought that something worrying is really going on, so I tried to find more evidence to confirm that this video posted on reddit earlier isn’t an individual mistake. I checked first round of Workout #3 (about 50 videos) if there is 4 or 8 – 25-ft runs completed. It wasn’t very hard to find athletes shortening the runs, here you have couple examples and during watching other videos some athletes wanted to start climbing the rope, after 4 run, but their judges were vigilant. It shows how problematic the rep scheme was.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BCcq0y1s3_M

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mpE_54vkOQE

If you dig deeper into the leaderboard it’s getting worse. First 3 workouts are statistically comparable. Here are some facts (I know that verification is on and some scores are changing but it is the tip of the iceberg, because if HQ will delete only top wrong scores it doesn’t change anyone’s place)

Workout #1 - 17 athletes from TOP200 are outside TOP1000 overall worldwide.

Workout #2 - 16 athletes from TOP200 are outside TOP1000 overall worldwide.

Workout #3 - 71 athletes from TOP200 are outside TOP1000 overall worldwide.

This shows the scale of the problem and the difference is huge – notice it is only the absolute top. We can easily estimate that if we would go to the furthers pages of the leaderboard amount of „the unintentional cheaters” will be growing dramatically. This situation have the biggest impact on bubble athletes because the concentration of falsified scores is in the middle of the pack.

Sadly, rulebook says:

During the Quarterfinals, the top women, men, and teams on each respective continental leaderboard will be required to submit videos for review, so athletes or teams who may be competitive for a top leaderboard position (as outlined below by continent) should videotape all their workouts. The following number of top athletes and teams per continent should be prepared to submit videos for review at the time they submit their score:

· North America – 180 women and men

· Europe - 90 women and men

· Oceania, Asia, South America and Africa – 50 women and men.

Of course weird scores for the top of the leaderboard will be fixed like in The Open. But it is very unlikely that HQ will check proper part of scores which can have an impact on athletes which may be advancing to semifinals.. Why?

The lowest place in workout #3 from TOP120 athletes in North America (semifinals cutline) is 652nd (16:18). So we can assume that times around 16:00 are competitive boundry. If HQ wants to be 100% that their participants are fairly rated they should verify AT LEAST all TOP600 scores only in North America – rather not likely.

Additionally we don’t know even if then will check this workout at all, because they check only selected workouts as in the open.

Noah Ohlsen says in Sevan Podcast that it is weird that amount of penalties in Workout #2 is much bigger than in Workout #1 which consist HSPU and lunges (e.g. dumbbell cannot be held together overhead) and verification of Workout #1 was very quick instead. So this may indicate that HQ gives more attenintion to particular workouts.

One interesting fact:

During research of the leaderboard, I have noticed that European scores was as good as Americans, taking for consideration that North America has 73 pages and Europe 44 pages it is odd.

So I checked „competitive boundry” based on workout #3 (650th place score) for all workouts and the diffrence between American and EU:

Workout #1: 10:44

North America: 651st

EU: 372nd

Difference: 279

Workout #2: 11:00

North America: 651st

EU: 459th

Difference: 192

Workout #3: 16:18

North America: 652nd

EU: 564th

Difference: 88

Workout #4: 924 lbs

North America: 653rd

EU: 254th

Difference: 670

Workout #5: 3:58

North America: 654th

EU: 368th

Difference: 286

The reason of this can be that Europe has different metric system and for them 25ft or 50ft isn’t something they can „see” it isn’t natural, so they can have bigger tendency to omit the fact about counting back and forth.

Personally I can’t find any other reasonable arguments for setting 4-8-12-16-12-8-4, not 8-16-24-32-24-16-8 rep scheme than looking better on the paper. CrossFit created big problem which technically isn’t possible to solve.

Well maybe newborn CrossFit Influhater - Andrew Hiller can shake this topic up, perfect timing and opportunity to another shine.

*data can change due to verification process, but during two days HQ only clear absolute Top

 

[mrzennoboss]

@outlook2018 Well the good news is what ever Dani speegle does regardless of the rules , she will move on

 

[grace4nan]

@outlook2018

Influhater

)

 

[nae64]

@grace4nan @outlook2018 Throw data like this out there, and he'll probably reference this post and give you credit

 

[ncvaalgirl]

@outlook2018 Don't put the blame on Crossfit. Put the blame on athletes and their judges for not being able to read.

 

[gsweeney]

@ncvaalgirl Agreed!

While I agree with all of OP’s points about there needing to be a good validation system for checking scores, I actually don’t understand how judges and athletes made the shuttle run mistake. I judged a quarterfinals athlete and by a super quick look at the workout description is was very clear that 50ft/there & back was one rep. Anyone who missed that likely missed a lot of the other standards for other workouts, like GHD height, how to hold the DBs, handstand push-up height, rope height, etc. It says right up front “1 shuttle run = down the length of the competition floor and back” and then again in the workout description says “one repetition of the shuttle run = down the length of the competition floor and back”. I wouldn’t be surprised if the same people who got the shuttle run standard wrong also missed a lot of the other workout standards.

 

[sadkitty]

@ncvaalgirl While understand it's up to the individual to fully read, why would you write the workout out like that?

The athletes are to blame for not reading, but CrossFit is to blame for making it confusing. There are other ways to write it that are much less confusing. Such as:

8 25ft Shuttles runs
200m run (done in 25ft shuttle runs)

Why would you write the information in different places:

25ft length required

Then somewhere else:

4 shuttle runs

And then somewhere else write:

By the way, one shuttle run is 50ft. So it's actually 2 lengths.

 

[thespeedboy]

@sadkitty https://games-assets.crossfit.com/s3fs-public/2022-03/CFG22 QF_IND_Scorecard_W3_oainfosaidnf_0.pdf

• One repetition of the shuttle run = down the length of
the competition floor and back.

Copied directly from the rules. It flat out says down and back is one rep.

 

[olboodog]

@thespeedboy And HQ could have easily had made the scorecard read shuttle run 200ft, shuttle run 400ft, and so on. Instead they left it up to chance and misinterpretation.

 

[thespeedboy]

@olboodog It's very clear. If one rep is down and back and the round calls for 16 reps then it's pretty simple what one needs to do. If a person is not able to easily understand that then I question their mental fitness. It's incredibly clear. I would argue that the current way of identifying the workout is much easier than listing it in total distance. If it were just a single run then the distance makes sense. Otherwise, breaking it into reps is better.

 

[olboodog]

@thespeedboy I had no problem interpreting it. You had no problem interpreting. But a not insignificant portion of the field, including their judges did. And that’s a problem. Listing total distance alongside the reps would clear that up. They frequently have running rep totals listed for rounds, so why not rep:distance totals in then box too? Then you can cross off 25ft or 50ft marks on the sheet as the athlete progresses.

 

[thespeedboy]

@olboodog Consider it a way to weed people out. I'd argue that anyone who failed to properly understand some very simple English is entirely to blame for their error. I don't put an ounce of blame on Crossfit. Reading comprehension and attention to detail is important.

 

[outlook2018]

@thespeedboy Fully agree that not carefully reading athletes caused the leaderboard mess and I consciously omit this fact in my post, because for me it's obvious, meanwhile HQ have created environment and tools to do this mess. Most important question for you: Is it fair that other athletes are disadvantaged because some athletes can't read?

 

[thespeedboy]

@outlook2018 If a professional misreads the rules to something pertaining to their job then they deserve whatever consequences arise from that. No concessions should be made for the people who didn't follow the rules and they should be forced to eat their mistakes.

 

[olboodog]

@thespeedboy So all 3 of us agree that this is an issue as far as the scores are all messed up, we just disagree on who's really more at fault.

The thing that makes this really bad is I don't believe that HQ is going dive deep enough on review to remove all the invalid scores, potentially knocking deserving athletes who did do it right out of qualifying spots.

 

[jul1a]

@thespeedboy It's funny I was just listening to the most recent 1 More Strongcast with the guest being '22 Arnold Pro Women's champion Victoria Long, and paying attention to the rules came up, and how it's pretty common for athletes to have no idea what the rules of the comp are. Rule 1 of entering any competition is pay attention to the rules!

 

[olboodog]

@thespeedboy The issue is HQ is not going to filter through all the scores and DQ the inadvertent cheaters, affecting overall standings because some people did half the distance. It's only weeding people out if HQ does something about it which they won't. Some people near the bubble are maybe missing out on 20 points to make semis, and their event 3 placing is say 600th. If there's 30 people between say top 200 that they might check (if that) and 600 who did half the reps netting them an unearned faster time, that's preventing someone from their proper position.

 

[sadkitty]

@thespeedboy I'm not saying that it didn't say it. I'm also not saying that CFHQ didn't tell people. What is am saying is that they made it needlessly confusing. If you are breaking up a distance into 25ft shuttle runs, why would you count the reps as 50ft intervals? Just using 25ft intervals.

When most people do a shuttle run, there is one rep. The way back is another. If you were to do lengths of a pool, why would you say it's 2 lengths, but a length is there and back?

All we are saying is that the athletes fucked up. They didn't read the rules. But it was unnecessarily confusing and there is a much simpler way to write it out.

 

[ncvaalgirl]

@sadkitty How is it confusing. Use your fucking eyes. Weird hill to die on. People fucked up. If you’re gonna put a workout or a time on the internet know what you’re doing. It’s not hard. Don’t defend those idiots.

 

[thespeedboy]

@sadkitty If you look up what a shuttle run is then it would make sense. The entire purpose of a shuttle run is a down and back motion. It's literally what the movement is designed to be. It only makes sense that one rep would be down and back. That said, the rules are not even remotely vague. They are as clear as they can be. Anyone who messed that up has no one to blame but themselves.