Justin Medeiros and Ellie Turner shared a lengthy video explaining what happened at the 2023 CrossFit Games. He was touted to win the CrossFit Games but finished 13th, while she was coming from an Oceania Semifinal win, but withdrew on Friday night.
A week after the 2023 CrossFit Games has wrapped up, favourite Justin Medeiros uploaded a video on his YouTube channel to explain why he and up-and-coming athlete Ellie Turner had a disappointing year at the competition.
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What Happened to Justin Medeiros at the 2023 CrossFit Games
Although Medeiros was touted to win his 3rd Fittest on Earth, or at least be on the podium, he finished 13th overall and, at some point, was even below the cutline of the Games. In the end, Jeff Adler won, with Pat Vellner second and Roman Khrennikov third.
In short, Justin Medeiros peaked too early and was extremely nervous coming into his junior stint at the CrossFit Games.
“Going into the open obviously, didn’t do as well in the open as I did the previous year, but wasn’t like any reason for concern,” Medeiros says. Getting to Quarterfinals a few weeks later is when he wanted to prove a point, that he was here to stay and was a force in the competition.
“Obviously, the Quarterfinals went really well. Won two workouts in a competition which is unlike me from that time of the year.”
Source: Courtesy of CrossFit Inc.However, with that idea of proving himself to the other competitors, he ended up putting a lot of pressure on himself to be fitter than he was the year before. “I still haven’t been able to put my finger on why, but I definitely felt a lot more pressure than I have any other year.”
Medeiros finished Quarterfinals in the top position worldwide but finished 5th at Semifinals, which was still enough to get an invitation to the Games.
Medeiros says that coming into the Games while training, there were a lot of little things that gave him doubts about whether he was going to accomplish what he set out to do.
“I know I’m doing everything I can but there’s a lot of things that I should be doing that I’m not doing and I think going into the Games with the pressure and the things that I had during Games training had some doubt I think kind of creep into my mind.”
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What Happened to Ellie Turner at the 2023 CrossFit Games
Ellie Turner is the Fittest Woman in Australia, but she had hoped for more than that this year. After finishing 9th worldwide at the Open and winning the Torian Pro Semifinal, her eyes were locked on finishing the Games with a bang.
Up to this year, she went to the Games only twice, finishing 26th in 2021 and 18th last year. However, she didn’t manage to improve this year again and finished 31st after withdrawing on Friday night.
Ellie Turner moved from Australia to the United States at the beginning of her CrossFit season and it had an impact on her season.
“That whole ordeal of officially moving from Australia to the US had a bigger impact on me than I thought and then you always have a few little injuries and things like that here and there. They’re little hiccups that make it challenging […] but going back for Torian [CrossFit Semifinal] was challenging in itself picking up once I had moved across.”
The problem for Turner happened during the first workout on Friday morning, the Alpaca Redux. When she had to clean and jerk the kettlebells, on the first few reps, she “felt something in my back.”
“Picked the kettlebells back up and I said ‘hmmm, that’s not good, that’s gonna be really bad’ so it was a war.”
She finished the workout and was happy with it, but soon came the warning. “Started walking back and it just locked up and probably took 20 minutes to walk from North Park to the warm-up area and at this point I didn’t know if I was going to have to withdraw, but I knew I wasn’t going to be able to execute the rest of the weekend.”
Turner’s coaches said it was her decision to make, whether to withdraw or not. She wanted to see if withdrawing was really her only option, so she kept on pushing to the next workout. During the Ski-Bag event, she mainly used her legs for the workout to save her back and really felt it before heading to the final event.
“It was an emotional decision and I was emotional going out onto the floor knowing that it was my last event in Madison end of the weekend.”
To see both athletes giving their own explanations in more detail, watch the video below.
2023 CrossFit Games: 4 Things We Liked and 4 Things We Didn’t
Image Sources
- How is Justin Medeiros so good at CrossFit: Courtesy of CrossFit Inc.
- Ellie Turner & Justin Medeiros: Courtesy of CrossFit Inc.