As Week One draws to a close, athletes are nursing flappers and torn callouses while fans anxiously await to see what Dave Castro and CrossFit officials have in mind for the second workout, which pits fourth-place Games finisher Michele Letendre against sixth-place finisher Emily Bridgers.

 

The showdown between the two 5’1”, 135-pound athletes takes place March 5 in Austin, Texas, at CrossFit Jääkarhu. “It’s really hard to find another athlete who had a better 2014 than Emily Bridgers,” said Tommy Marquez, CrossFit Games analyst, in a video posted by CrossFit. Marquez added that for the past three years, Bridgers has had a top-10 finish in the Open, making her a favorite to watch in 2015.

 

Letendre, a Games veteran and top-15 finisher in 2013, had an impressive showing in 2014 with eight top-10 finishes, including first place in the push-pull WOD.

 

Throughout the workouts during the 2014 Games, the spread between Bridgers and Letendre was fairly wide -- with each athlete swapping a top-10 finish with a top-20 finish -- except for the 21-15-9 complex where Letendre took 8th and Bridgers finished 11th. It’s plausible Games officials would match up these athletes with Week 2 based on that workout, which, unfortunately for Open athletes hoping to hang in the RX division, featured a lot of bar work, including muscle-ups.

 

One of Letendre’s favorite movements is the muscle-up and Bridgers, a collegiate gymnast, also excels in the movement; although it seems especially cruel to feature the muscle-up so early in the Open (it typically rears its ugly head in week three or four).

 

Past week-two WODs have tested athletes on deadlifts, snatches, overhead squats, push-ups, pull-ups, and box jumps. It’s (probably) safe to assume deadlifts and snatches won’t be featured given their place in Week One. It’s also (hopefully) true that this week won’t feature pull-ups since toes-to-bars were prominent last week.

 

It’s almost a certainty this week will feature box jumps, which may prove challenging for Letendre who tumbled down to 666th place on the Open leaderboard in 2014 in week three – a WOD that featured an AMRAP of deadlifts and box jumps.

 

A WOD similar to Week Three from 2013, which featured a 12-minute AMRAP of 150 wall balls, 90 double-unders and 30 muscle-ups is also not out of the question, as officials let athletes’ tender palms heal up for another week – assuming they swap those muscle-ups for box jumps.

Related Articles: 
The Battle For Pan Ams Begins At The Arnold 
CrossFit Open Unveils Killer 15.1 Workout