Campbell has confounded her critics with CrossFit
CrossFit: Ex-swimmer and gymnast now one of the world’s best CrossFit athletes
Having been told she was too big to become an international swimmer, Windsorborn Lucy Campbell has confounded those who doubted her with sensational performances at the 2022 NOBULL CrossFit Games.
She is only the second British woman to qualify for the Games, which took place last month (August 3-7) in Madison, Wisconsin, and it’s fair to say she crushed some of the events, dominating some of the best CrossFit athletes in the world.
The first of those was in the swim event, where her background as a promising international swimmer helped massively, and she was also top of the leader board in the final event of the Games, where athletes had to row 1,000m before completing 50 30kg barbell curls and 30 bar pulls ups.
“My background in swimming put me in a really good position for one of the events,” she said. “Because I was able to get a decent lead even though it was a short swim section, it gave me more time on the next part, the ski, so I was really pleased to live up to my hopes on that one.
“But the last one. It was a row, but it had a time cap on it, so you had to come off at 3.40 which is a decent stretch on the row. Then the barbell thrusters are a little bit heavier than they normally would be. That event, I honestly wasn’t expecting to win at all. It came as such a surprise. I wasn’t even in the last heat for it, which have the top 10 athletes from the heats. I did the event, and I knew I had won my heat and I was buzzing to win that. It was only when we were sitting beneath the stand in the warmup area, when someone said to me ‘your time might actually hold up here’. It was so unexpected; I was in shock because I’d won the event.
“There’s always work to be done in CrossFit. That’s the thing I love about it. There always feels like there’s something to work on, and for some people that’s really demoralising because they never feel good at everything, but for me, it’s what keeps me coming back. I love that aspect of the sport after years of swimming.”
Lucy, 25, is a CrossFit coach and athlete living in Nottingham, where she balances her vigorous training routine with her group classes.
She qualified for the Games after finishing fifth in the CrossFit Lowlands semi-finals in Amsterdam earlier this year, becoming the second British elite female to make it through to the main CrossFit Games.
She started out in sport as a national level gymnast until the age of 12 when she switched to focus on swimming, again competing internationally to a high level until university.
However, she lost confidence, and struggled with her body image and relationship with food after being constantly told by coaches she wasn’t small enough to become a successful international swimmer.
It wasn’t until she found CrossFit that she realised her size or body aesthetic shouldn't hold her back and she was finally able to realise what she was truly capable of. She took to CrossFit instantly, finishing 13th in the world in the first CrossFit Open in 2019 – the first stage in qualifying for the Games. She was also one of the athletes to watch at Wodapalooza Fitness Festival in Miami a few months ago, where she finished just outside of the top three having dominated the rowing and swimming events.
“I love coaching and encouraging women to improve their lives, because there’s been such an awful narrative around women and exercise for the last however many years,” she said. “If I can impact the women who come to my classes or see me on social media to want to get into exercise and feel strong, and all the benefits that come with it, that’s a really rewarding thing because we deserve better than to have diet culture shoved down our throats.
“Coming from swimming and gymnastics, I feel I grew up half naked a lot of the time, so I’ve always been very conscious of my body and how I look. But I felt like with CrossFit, when I was performing well, there were no comments about my body, and when I was performing well in swimming there were comments about my body. It felt different coming into CrossFit Boxes, so it’s helped me in that sense massively.”