The CrossFit Games continued on Saturday with four more events, split between the iconic Aromas Ranch and the Morgan Hill Soccer Complex. Perennial Games athlete Kari Pearce started her day slowly with two fourth-place finishes but rebounded and ended the day still in contention for a podium spot. Now she will aim to bounce back from a missed lift during the Snatch Speed Triple event and achieve a career-best finish.
The second event of Saturday, the Snatch Speed Triple tasked athletes with completing three squat snatches with progressively heavier weights as quickly as possible. Pearce made it to the semifinal after beating out Haley Adams, but she missed her first attempt at 170 pounds after falling backward out of the bottom of her squat. The other three athletes all made their first attempt and moved on to the final round while Pearce ended the event in fourth place overall. She secured 35 points while Tia-Clair Toomey won and added another 100 to her total.
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“The miss in the snatch event, I feel like things happen to everybody,” Pearce told PopCulture and other media after Saturday’s schedule came to an end. “It’s a close race in the Games, so you have to forget what happened and just look ahead to the next event. And I think all of us are ready to put our best foot forward on the final day.”
The finish was not ideal for Pearce, but she continued to fight and finished the second day of competition very strong. She took third in the bike sprint/rope lunge event and then turned in an impressive comeback performance in Happy Star. Brooke Wells and Toomey led the pack through the first three rounds of a hill run, burpees over a beam and thrusters, but Pearce turned on the speed midway through the final round’s run. She raced back down the hill, making up a considerable amount of ground, and then ultimately passed Wells to rack up 75 points.
There have never been any questions about Pearce’s ability to perform well during events that feature gymnastics movements. However, she has previously struggled with heavy weightlifting. She has put in considerable time working on a relative weakness, which she showed during the first two days of competition. She is nowhere near finished and plans on coming back even stronger during the 2021 season.
“It’s been a lot of squatting, a lot of weightlifting, technique stuff,” Pearce continued to explain. “Obviously, I think I need to work on that after the Snatch Speed Ladder, but everything’s getting better.” She also revealed that her coach wants her to get on the bike more and get outside to continue working on endurance. The former gymnast plans on doing just that as the start of the new season approaches. First off, however, Pearce will continue fighting for a podium spot during the final day of competition.
The 2020 CrossFit Games continue Sunday with at least three events. There is a Sprint Sled Sprint, one featuring swimming and then the mysterious Atalanta, which Director of the Games Dave Castro dubbed the “hardest workout ever.” There could only be the revealed three events, but Castro has a tendency to surprise athletes during the final day of competition. Coverage for the action begins at 10 a.m. PT on games.crossfit.com, Pluto TV, and the company’s Facebook, YouTube and Twitch channels.
