Women of the 2023 CrossFit Open, Part 1
Meet Amy Morton and Leka Fineman, two of six women we're profiling over the next few weeks.
Welcome to the first ever Flex, an edition of Women’s Barbell Club that highlights women who participate in strength in some form or fashion.
The annual CrossFit Open, which functions as the first round of the CrossFit Games season, ended in March, with more than 300,000 participants worldwide. According to CrossFit, Inc., women and girls made up 44 percent of participants, with athletes as young as 13 and as old as 87 competing. Some had their sights set on qualifying for the Games; for others, the Open was just another way to participate in their gym community.
Over the next few weeks, as the CrossFit season continues, we’re profiling six women — two per newsletter — who landed in the top of their division in the 2023 CrossFit Open. You might already be familiar with Mallory O’Brien and Brooke Wells, but these names will likely be new to you.
This is the first of a three-part series.
Amy Morton (Second Place, 35-39 Division)
Canada - North America East - Ocean State CrossFit - 35 years old - 5’3”
Open Workouts
23.1 - 5th place (225 reps)
23.2a - 2nd (168 reps)
23.2b (max thruster) - 44th (192 lbs)
23.3 - 63rd (287 reps)
“Function over form is not only a great incentive for people to have a healthy relationship [with their bodies], but there are going to be ups and downs in your life — and if fitness is only about what you look like, it’s not as gratifying.” ~Amy Morton
Ever since her childhood on a crop farm in southern Ontario, Amy Morton has been an athlete. She grew up splitting chores with a twin brother and another older brother, both of whom grew to be about six feet tall; she’s 5’3”.
“The same amount of work is expected,” she says. “You need to put down irrigation pipe and carry these big, steel 20-foot-long pipes, unload them from the wagon, and connect them together for 300 yards. … There was no, ‘Oh, you drive the tractor because you’re a girl.’”
Looking back, she sees this as an equalizing experience. Between farm chores and playing rugby and co-ed soccer, she never got the message that because she was a girl she was less physically capable. What she did catch was the competition bug. At home, she and her twin brother would come up with physical challenges for each other. In college and after earning her master’s in computer science, she sought out intramural sports.
It wasn’t until 2013, after rupturing her ACL playing ultimate frisbee, that she stumbled upon CrossFit. The strength element and scalability of CrossFit, as well as the community aspect, appealed to her.
“This presents me an opportunity to still play … to engage in sport, but [also] prehabilitate my injury because I was trying to have it surgically repaired,” she says.
She did CrossFit leading up to her surgery and afterward, and when she became pregnant a few months later, she continued following the methodology. “I pretty much CrossFitted all the way up until I gave birth and was in the gym like 10 days postpartum,” she says.
Now the 35-year-old — who has an 8-year-old son and works as a senior research engineer in the bioengineering lab at Brown University — spends much of her free time in the gym. About a year and a half ago, she set her sights on competing at the Games as a Master’s athlete (Master’s divisions start at age 35), so she and her life partner Stu Swanson hired Jason Leydon of Conquer Athlete to coach them.
“I’m doing twice as much as I used to,” Morton says. Many days, she’ll train both in the morning and after work.
In addition to landing second in her age group for the Open — which sends her to the next round of competition — Morton saw some her hard work pay off this past December, when she won the Women’s 35-39 division of the Legends Championship at CrossFit Mayhem in Tennessee. It was an exciting victory and one she hopes to replicate on the world stage.
Alexia “Leka” Fineman (First Place, 55-59 Division)
United States - North America West - CrossFit Tustin - 56 - 5’5”
Open Workouts
23.1 - 2nd place (190 reps)
23.2a - 27th (129 reps)
23.2b (max thruster) - 2nd (157 lbs)
23.3 - 8th (11:12)
“The same way that anyone could be an artist — we are put on this planet to create — we’re also put on this planet to move … so anybody can be an athlete.” ~Leka Fineman
The first time Leka Fineman stepped into a CrossFit gym, she was 40 years old and just trying to get her younger brother to stop badgering her about CrossFit.
“He’d been going on and on about it,” she says, “so I went with him to literally make him shut up.”
Fineman had always been active, but had never touched a barbell and certainly didn’t consider herself competitive. Growing up with her hippy mom in northern California, she’d been raised in nature. They grew their own food. She rode horses, swam recreationally, and started practicing yoga at age 12, which she credits for her body awareness.
But she also had internalized a fear of getting big and bulky.
“I definitely grew up in the era where being skinny was the goal, and so I was always afraid of lifting weights,” she says. “That was just not something that women did.”
What a surprise, then, to discover that she actually really liked CrossFit. The intensity. The mirror-free warehouse setting. She and her brother started bringing barbells on family vacations and doing workouts in the woods.
When she moved to Oakland after a divorce, she joined CrossFit Oakland — again, with her brother — and found more than a fitness routine. “It was just the right time in my life to find a new community, a new outlet for stress relief, and to get in touch with my own strength.”
It took some time to shed the fear of getting bulky, and even longer to start thinking of herself as an athlete. But she wanted to improve — at lifting, gymnastics skills, jumping rope.
Gradually, her mindset shifted and she started intentionally prioritizing strength. Then friends and neighbors started asking her about her routine. In 2016, she started coaching neighborhood women in her garage. She quit her corporate job, earned her CrossFit Level One certification, started teaching yoga classes at a gym. Today, she works full-time as a fitness and nutrition coach, leading retreats and seminars to help women in particular fuel themselves and, as she puts it, “connect with their strength.”
This year’s Open was her twelfth — she’s participated every year since she was 45 — and she’s aiming for her fifth Games qualification, with the goal of winning the Women 55–59 division.
The second part of Open Workout 23.2 brought a welcome surprise: Fineman PRed her max thruster by 12 pounds.
“I’m just shocked,” she says. “I can’t believe I’m still getting stronger at 56.”
Recommended Reading
Beside the Pointe: How PNB Navigates Parenthood and Ballet (Seattle Met)
Heavy Lifting: Casey Johnston on Diet Culture and Exercise (The Sun Magazine)
What’s coming up:
Women of the 2023 CrossFit Open, Part 2
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