Opinion | CrossFit: is Jeffrey Adler podium bound at 2021 Games after impressive Open performance?
- The 26-year-old Canadian burst onto the scene last year with a fifth-place finish at the 2020 Games
- Adler, who put in an impressive performance throughout the Open workouts, now looks to build on the accomplishment
Canadian Jeffrey Adler started working with his coach (and partner) Caroline Lambray in 2015. Their goals and strategies have seemingly always aligned, and unlike others who came into the sport around that same time, they have seemingly always taken the long-term view: trusting that building a strong foundation and playing the long game would eventually pay off. Given Adler’s recent accomplishments, it’s easy to say it has.
In Adler’s first Open he placed 2,709th worldwide, and 188th in Canada. He has made a steady climb up the leaderboard since then. In his second year he was 410th and 37th, and by his third year he was inside the top 100 worldwide and inside the top 10 in the impressive Canadian men’s field.
His worldwide ranking in the Open continued to climb in 2019 (26th and 5th) and 2020 (5th and 1st). The top-five finish, and becoming the fittest man in Canada in the 2020 Open, came on the back of what some have called the most impressive Open performance ever. In 20.4, a test which featured box jumps, single-leg squats (pistols), and ascending weight clean and jerks, Adler set the world record with an incredible time of 12:41.
His time was one minute and 41 seconds faster than the second best time among all men worldwide that week, that belonging to five-time CrossFit Games champion Mat Fraser.
The 2021 Open brought several changes, chief among them the introduction of a prize purse for a top-five finish, with the eventual winner earning US$15,000. After two weeks it was pretty tight at the top of the men’s field, with several notable names well within striking distance and only one week remaining.
