Back-to-Back Champ: Colten Mertens Wins 2026 CrossFit Open With AIRWAAV
The 2026 CrossFit Open season has come to a close, and for the second year in a row, Colten Mertens has secured the first-place spot. With an impressive performance across all three workouts, Mertens not only claimed the top spot, but placed first in the 26.3 workout.
THE 2026 CROSSFIT OPEN: RISING TO THE CHALLENGE
The CrossFit Open, the first stage of the CrossFit Games season, is a three-week online competition where athletes battle through challenging workouts to qualify for the next stage. This year’s Open featured three workouts:
-
26.1: A 12-minute pyramid workout pairing wall-ball shots and box jump-overs. The rep scheme peaked at 66 wall balls, making it brutally difficult – fewer than 1% of athletes finished Rx'd.
-
26.2: A three-round chipper featuring dumbbell lunges, alternating snatches, and an escalating pulling movement each round: pull-ups, chest-to-bar, then ring muscle-ups. Only 13% of men and 4% of women completed it within the 15-minute cap.
-
26.3: A barbell chipper to close out the Open, cycling through burpees over the bar, cleans, and thrusters across six rounds at three ascending weights – all within a 16-minute time cap.
Three AIRWAAV athletes finished in the top 10 on the Men's side of the leaderboard: Colten Mertens (1st), James Sprague (6th), and Harry Lightfoot (7th).
AIRWAAV ATHLETES CONTINUE TO DOMINATE
With three AIRWAAV athletes in the top ten of the worldwide Open leaderboard, it’s clear that our athletes are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible. Breathing better, recovering faster, and performing at the highest level – this is what AIRWAAV is all about.
The Open was just the warm-up. Colten Mertens, James Sprague, Harry Lightfoot, and the rest of the AIRWAAV roster are locked in and hungry for more. The 2026 season is heating up fast.
