Jeremie Jourdan of Denair is officially the fittest 15-year-old in the world, as he took home first place in his age group at the prestigious 2023 NOBULL CrossFit Games in Madison, Wisconsin over the weekend.
“It’s pretty crazy, huh?” Jourdan said with a laugh. “The first day after I won, I didn’t realize how big it was, but now, it’s just huge. A huge accomplishment. It was such an amazing experience.”
Jourdan, who trains out of CrossFit Turlock, finished the three-day competition with 610 points in the age 14-15 age group. Meanwhile, the second-place finisher, Lincoln LaFaver of Pennsylvania, finished with 590 points. Jourdan clinched his championship in the final competition, tabbed as the Final Positions, where competitors did timed 20 bar muscle-ups and 30 alternating dumbbell squat snatches. It was a dominating performance, as he and beat out LaFaver by nearly 15 seconds.
“I was just thinking, ‘Just hang on for this last workout. Let me just full send it and see what happens,’” Jourdan explained “I knew that it was a good event for me, and once I finished, I just said, ‘We did it. All the hard work and the sacrifice paid off.’”
The big win didn’t come without some hurdles, though, as he found himself in last place after the first day.
Jourdan finished the opening day with 10 points in the Helen competition, which consists of a 400-meter run, 21 kettlebell swings and 12 pull-ups. He and his trainer, Isaiah Figueroa, both believe that they were dealt a bad hand, as the judge assigned to him consistently ruled no-reps throughout the day.
“I knew it was going to be pretty hard to make up ground… The toughest part [of the weekend] was probably the mental aspect of getting last that first day and trying to bounce back from that, but we did,” Jourdan said.
“Honestly, that kept me up all night that first night,” Figueroa shared. “I was telling him that everything would be fine, but obviously, we didn’t really know if everything would be fine. I knew he could make a trek back to the podium, but the fact that he made it back to first with that big of a point gap is incredible.”
That gap was closed due to Jourdan placing second in the next three competitions – pulling power, gymnastics chipper and the cross-country 5K – while the rest of the field was up and down and scattered in the ranks.
After Jourdan finished the final workout of the competition and clinched first place, he immediately found Figueroa in the crowd, greeting him with a hug,
“As a coach, I’m just as in-tuned as he is as an athlete because of my involvement in it, and I care so much about him and his success, because I witness all the hard work he puts in,” Figueroa said. “To see him come back and win, I just felt proud. For him to finish on that much of a high note, it’s just what he deserved.
“We started with PVC pipes and an empty barbell. We started with very basic movements before we graduated to this. Just to see that the years of work have accumulated to what was on display, to prove he was the best, it’s amazing.”
Jourdan is now the second athlete out of CrossFit Turlock to earn a first-place finish at the CrossFit, joining Stevenson’s Cindy Kelley, who won it all in the women’s 50-54 age division in the 2015 Games.
Despite reaching the pinnacle of the sport, he he has no plans of slowing down.
“It was a great experience, being there and just competing with all the other professional athletes, seeing all them and warming up with them. I loved every part of it,” Jourdan said. “I for sure want to repeat. We have a lot of hard work ahead of us.”
