Rogue’s Stadium, 20.4 Announcement, 20.4 Predictions

About Rogue’s CrossFit stadium. How to watch the 20.4 announcement live stream. 20.4 workout predictions. Current Open leaderboard standings.

Tuesday, October 29th, 2019

Good morning and welcome to the WODDITY podcast for news about CrossFit. We are a daily podcast, Monday through Friday, doing CrossFit news in five minutes or less.

My name is Ben Garves and today is Tuesday, the 29th of October, 2019. 

Rogue’s CrossFit Stadium

I mentioned yesterday that Rogue has hit a municipal roadblock with their 4,000-seat arena they were planning to build adjacent to their headquarters in Columbus, Ohio. To which I was shocked to find out had somehow slipped under everyone’s radar. Yes, Rogue is building a multi-use arena. Yes, they will host CrossFit events there. And yes, they wanted it to be open and ready in mid-May for the return of the Rogue Invitational.

The stadium was announced in a press release on Rogue’s website in January, along with some really cool renders of what it would look like. Events, beyond CrossFit, could range from boxing to concerts. The original plan was for the arena to pop up next to their 600,000-square foot headquarters and factory. That site was finished in 2016 and now houses over 600 employees.

Now, yesterday’s news was that Rogue was in dispute with the city over parking for the event space. They warned Columbus that if the issue wasn’t resolved, they would be exploring the possibility of relocating their planned site to Austin, Texas. Rogue recently hosted the 20.1 Open workout announcement from Austin, so they’re no stranger to the area.

Watch 20.4 Announcement Live Streams

I know it feels like you just submitted your scores from 20.3, because you did. But, we are less than three days out from the announcement of CrossFit Open 20.4. If you’re not tired yet, you will be! Partially because we’re looking to knock your socks off with WODDITY’s live stream of the event. Alternating back and forth between Diablo CrossFit and the CrossFit Italian Showdown, we’re going to see some incredible athletes. Those include two-time champion Annie Thorisdottir, one-time champion Ben Smith, Sean Sweeney, and Jason Carroll.

WODDITY’s 20.4 live stream countdown will start at 4PM Pacific (7PM Eastern), with analysis and commentary starting at 4:30.

Grab the link to the stream from my show notes at WODDITY.com, and click the “Set Reminder” button on YouTube. It'll ping you when the stream starts on Thursday. If you want more, more, more live events, also subscribe to WODDITY’s YouTube channel. You’ll be able to tune into all the cool stuff we do, including Sanctional events.

20.4 Predictions

Using Morning Chalk Up’s movement tracker, it looks like the most common movements we haven’t seen yet are chest-to-bar pull-ups, wall balls, ring muscle-ups, rowing, and box jumps. This has been a pretty divergent Open. Dave Castro has programmed a number of rarely-used or never-used movements like dumbbell thrusters, generic ground-to-overhead, and handstand walks. I should mention that the ground-to-overhead has a caveat, because snatches have been used all but one year.

Anywhoo, the takeaway here, and something y’all should know by now, is that nobody knows. With wall balls and rowing still on the board, it could be a repeat of 19.1. I think wall balls and ring muscle-ups could be equally daunting.

Open Leaderboard Standings

Right now, CrossFit is doing video review of the top 40 male and female Open submissions. But, I can give you a preliminary leaderboard update.

On the men’s side, second through fifth place is Bjorgvin Karl Gudmundsson, Patrick Vellner, Mat Fraser, and Noah Ohlsen. What a wild ride. Oh, first place. Yes. That’s one Lefteris Theofanidis of Greece, who continues his incredible run this year. First place in 20.3 specifically was Austin Malleolo. He won the workout in 2018, and came back to prove he’s still got it. Bravo, man.

For the women, we have a three-way tie for second place between Annie Thorisdottir, Kristin Holte, and Carol-Ann Reason-Thibault. First place is the ever-so-familiar name of Sara Sigmundsdottir. Annie Thorisdottir and Brooke Wells are tied for the event win, with a time of 5:21.

And that’s it for news about CrossFit on Tuesday, October 29th. I know I normally tell you to rate, review, and subscribe here, but today I just want to thank you for listening. A lot of people who get up at four or five in the morning think through the reasons they have to do so. I get to wake up and do something I love for a community I love. I’m appreciative for you this morning. I’m Ben Garves. We’ll chat tomorrow.