The curious case of James Newbury

It’s been a year for the Oceania men’s field. First perennial games athletes Royce Dunne (team) and Bayden Brown (family) step back from the individual competition. Then Quarterfinals winner Ricky Garard requires season ending shoulder surgery. Now the Torian Pro is up in the air.

On the men’s side, Jay Crouch is the likely favorite. The 3 time CrossFit Games athlete won the 2022 Torian Pro, was 2nd behind Garard in 2023 Quarterfinals and was 13th in the 2023 CrossFit Open. The remaining 2 Games tickets however are up for grabs.

Enter James Newbury. In 2022 Newbury finished 17th at the Torian Pro, after doing a handful of CrossFit classes leading up to the event. In 2023, Newbury was looking to have fun competing, and ramped up his training to 4-5 CrossFit classes a week. Not exactly serious training for an elite CrossFitter, but a sizable jump from last year.

When taking a high level view of the Torian Pro field, Newbury doesn’t stand out. He finished 27th in Quarterfinals thanks to a 195th place in event 3. That event has a big * beside it though.

During event 3, WODProof crashed on Newbury resulting in an invalid workout for the event. Fortunately through the appeals process, Newbury was credited for the work completed before the app failure, and his season was able to continue.

Fast forward to Semifinals, and Newbury presents an interesting case for who will earn a ticket to the CrossFit Games.

When recalculating Quarterfinals results based on the 30 athletes going to Torian Pro, Crouch sits in first place with 22 points. Jake Douglas is in 2nd with 50 points, and Newbury sits 3rd with 52 points, 30 of which came from his last place finish in Event 3.

From a recent youTube clip from Wykie Etsebeth, Newbury completed Event 3 in 7:27, which would have tied him with Luke Fowler for 17th in the event based on the 30 men competing at Torian Pro. It would have been good for 30th in the full Oceania Quarterfinals field.

Obviously there is also another asterisk on this time, but for fun, if you used this 17th in our re-ranked Torian field Quarterfinals standings, Newbury would have 39 points. This would place him securely in second, 11 points ahead of Douglas for 3rd.

Even without giving Newbury a mulligan on event 3 his Games hopes are compelling. Newbury and Crouch are the only athletes to have 4 Quarterfinals event finishes in the top 10 when compared to the Torian field. Crouch has all 5 of his finishes in the top 10. In fact, all athletes except Crouch had at least one event finish in our recalculated ranks 20th or worse, so Newbury’s 30th isn’t an outlier finish for the Games hopefuls.

Quarterfinals found some significant holes in 29 of the 30 athletes. Newbury was however one of two athletes to demonstrate having the corresponding strengths to push to the top of the leaderboard.

As one of three men to have individual experience at the CrossFit Games(Newbury, Crouch and Zeke Grove), Newbury knows what it takes to earn a Games ticket. In a field as up in the air as Torian Pro, the odds look to be shifting in his favor as the season goes on.

All the data collected for this newsletter came from the above links and the RX version of the soon to be released creators tools on FranLung.com. For more information on these tools contact dave@franlung.com​

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In case you missed it

💪Teen atheltes competing at Semifinals​

🥇Where offseason event winners are competing​

🌎 A full breakdown of Semifinal athletes by country​

All the data collected for this newsletter came from the above links and the RX version of the soon to be released creators tools on FranLung.com. For more information on these tools contact dave@franlung.com.

Take Care

Dave from Fran Lung

PO Box 36068 Lakeview PO, Calgary, Alberta T3E7C6
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