Again, faster, stronger: Montreal CrossFit athletes go the distance

Of the three Montreal-area athletes to make it to this year’s CrossFit Games in Carson, CA, only one was able to finish what she started. Late Sunday afternoon, Quebec CrossFit darling Camille Leblanc-Bazinet was named the sixth-fittest woman on earth.

Camille Leblanc-Bazinet (yellow shorts) and Michele Letendre (pink sportsbra) line up for Friday’s medball handstand pushup workout
Photo used with permission from CrossFit, Inc.

Of the three Montreal-area athletes to make it to this year’s CrossFit Games in Carson, CA, only one was able to finish what she started. Late Sunday afternoon, Quebec CrossFit darling Camille Leblanc-Bazinet was named the sixth-fittest woman on earth.

Sponsored by Reebok, the Games are three days of intense workouts in blazing southern California heat. What seemed like hundreds of muscle-ups, cleans, deadlifts, overhead squats, GHD ball tosses, double-unders, box jumps, pull-ups and more culminated in two athletes being crowned the king and queen of CrossFit: Tennessee’s Rich Froning and Iceland’s Annie Thorisdottir, respectively.

Though her fellow Montrealers Michele Letendre and Albert-Dominic Larouche got cut at different parts of the competition, Leblanc-Bazinet went on to place sixth overall in the women’s individuals after clinching first in the final workout, which you can watch here. The 23-year-old is inching her way closer to a victory after finishing ninth in the 2010 Games (her first) and eighth in the 2011 Games.

Letendre, 26, and Larouche, 22, took the Eastern Canada regional qualifiers by storm this year, each placing first in their gender divisions. Letendre came from a sixth-place finish in the 2011 regionals to take first away from Leblanc-Bazinet.

Leblanc-Bazinet at the 2012 CrossFit Games photo used with permission from CrossFit, Inc.
Leblanc-Bazinet at the 2012 CrossFit Games photo used with permission from
CrossFit, Inc.

Leblanc-Bazinet at the 2012
CrossFit Games
Photo used with permission
from CrossFit, Inc.

But at the 2012 CrossFit Games, Leblanc-Bazinet proved stronger and more focused than her fellow Quebecers.

Friday, July 13’s workouts comprised a GHD medicine ball toss, a track triplet (three rounds of eight split snatch at 115/75 lb. for men/women, seven bar muscle-ups and a 400-metre run) and the breathtakingly brutal medball-handstand push-up workout (eight medicine ball cleans at 150/ 80 lb. for men/women, a 100-foot medicine ball carry, seven parallette handstand push-ups and a second 100-foot medicine ball carry).

All three of the Montreal-area athletes moved on to Saturday’s events, though Larouche’s efforts would fall short early in the day, causing him to place in a heartbreaking 25th in the men’s category while the 24 better-performing athletes moved on to the next round.

Saturday’s workouts included shuttle sprints, five rounds of rope-sled (20-foot rope climb and 20-yard sled drive), a clean ladder event with 15 progressively heavier barbells and, finally, a surprise workout — a pyramid chipper involving overhead squats, box jumps, thrusters, power cleans, toes to bar and possibly the worst exercise ever, burpee muscle-ups. Letendre came in first in her heat and sixth in the workout, allowing her to grab the last spot in the Top 24 and continue to the final day of competition.

Letendre during the event that ended her run at the 2012 CrossFit Games photo used with permission from CrossFit, Inc.
Letendre during the event that ended her run at the 2012 CrossFit Games photo
used with permission from CrossFit, Inc.

Letendre during the event that ended her run
at the 2012 CrossFit Games
Photo used with permission from CrossFit, Inc.

And then there were two: on Sunday, Leblanc-Bazinet and Letendre competed in a double-banger (as one commentator said, “Let the double-entendres fly!”) that only one of them survived — Letendre didn’t crack the Top 18.

The final event of the Games wasn’t announced until the day of and consisted of three separate workouts, all suspiciously named after women (Elizabeth, Isabel and Fran) and done consecutively, with little rest in between.

Leblanc-Bazinet made good time in all three, but her best time was in the final workout, Fran, which earned her first place in the event and edged her into sixth place overall — a respectable finish for a young athlete who may just climb to first overall in the 2013 CrossFit Games. ■

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