Icelandic female role models in sports, politics, and pop culture reinforced that women could take a strong lead. Our cultural influences told us to be healthy and to be strong, and also to judge on character, not gender.
I have never taken for granted how lucky I am to grow up in this environment. It’s something I’m passionate about sharing. I want women to have more confidence, and to believe in themselves. You’re never going to do something by accident. You have to believe in yourself to want to become something.
* * *
Icelanders believe they are the best at everything. When it comes to the CrossFit Games, it’s a matter of fact. In a world of strong women the Dottirs have consistently dominated the semifinal round of qualification on multiple continents. Since 2015 the top of the CrossFit Games leaderboard has read like an Icelandic phone book. For a country of modest size, we are monumentally accomplished in the sport of fitness.
It was Annie who first paved the way. When she was followed by an army of Icelandic women—Sara Sigmundsdóttir, Thuridur Helgadottir, Bjork Odinsdottir, and me—the CrossFit World took notice. People wanted to know why the women from Iceland were so good. Fans of the sport joked about the “Icelandic Invasion.”
One thing is obvious: Icelandic women are worthy of the hype. Despite the fact that only 1 percent of the total women’s field is from Iceland, one in four female podium finishers is Icelandic, and one in 2.5 female champions is Icelandic. That means we win the CrossFit Games about 160 times more often than you would expect us to win by chance. Those are staggering odds.
With CrossFit, the small size of Iceland is actually an advantage. Top athletes have grown together and challenged one another along the way inside and outside of CrossFit. The term “small world” takes a whole different meaning in Iceland. Everybody knows everybody, and if you don’t know someone directly, you definitely know someone who knows them.
In gymnastics I competed frequently against the little sister of Bjork Odinsdottir. Bjork became a frequent challenger at the Regional level and went on to appearances at the CrossFit Games as an individual and a team member. My best friend trained pole vault with Annie when they were younger. One of the most veteran team competitors in Iceland, Anna Ólafsdóttir, did gymnastics with her when they were younger. Our moms and teachers and coaches were either friends themselves or had friends in common.
Although we didn’t train together, we knew what everyone was doing. When Annie would perform the impossible, we would raise our game to that level. The intimidation level was reduced because I knew of these high-performing athletes as people, including the Fittest Woman on Earth. They were Icelandic women from right down the road. They did superhuman things, but in my world they were very human.
We would compete head to head at the Icelandic Championships and smaller competitions through Bootcamp and local CrossFit affiliates. We would push each other so hard that athletes were continuously breaking barriers. Little by little, the quality of competition was improving across the board. The rising tide raised all our ships.
Most people are never able to mingle or compete with the best in the world in their sport. I never met Simone Biles when I was in gymnastics and Allyson Felix never came to my track club. If you are lucky enough to have that opportunity, though, a spell can be broken. When you see champions in the flesh, you realize they are humans who bleed red just like you. When you understand this, lofty goals seem far more attainable. Annie’s rise to stardom fed the ambitions of the rest of us because we knew who she was.
If she can do it, we thought, why can’t I?
We believe we can succeed and that’s a huge part of our success. Even up-and-coming Icelandic athletes speak with confidence about their chances of winning. We all push each other to be the best because we all want to win. When Annie returned to Iceland as the world champion, she sparked the ambitions of a new generation of athletes. The natural talents of her compatriots have ignited that spark into an inferno.
CrossFit spread like wildfire in the wake of Annie’s success as well. When she had first traveled to the United States in 2009 to compete in Aromas, there was only one gym in all of Iceland. Now there are twelve in Reykjavik alone. Annie’s gym, CrossFit Reykjavik, services thousands of clients every day.
* * *
Having access to Annie early in my career gave me a leg up on the competition and was critical to my success. I had what was essentially an internship with the best female CrossFit athlete on the planet.
When you see someone performing under the competition lights, you can underestimate what it takes to get there. They make it look easy, when in reality, that person has spent years preparing. What is impossible to see on game day is the countless, thankless hours that had to come first. The 6 a.m. swimming sessions alone at the pool or the late-night runs in the snow. The tears, the doubt, and the struggles. People like to make excuses and tell themselves they’re not the best because they lost the genetic lottery. In reality, it’s hard work that makes champions—not genetics.
Having Annie there in front of me in the flesh, in the same gym, was priceless. I was able to talk to her and pick her brain. I was able to see that even though she looks and performs like a superhero, she is a girl just like me. Training with Annie and seeing her process took away my excuses. I could see she had the same number of hours in her day. I could see her workouts and the intensity she brought.
The biggest blessing of all was that it didn’t look easy. It looked hard as hell and extremely demanding of your time. But it still looked possible—she was doing it. I believed that if she could do it, then I could, too. Annie was a legend. She was the reigning champion of the CrossFit Games, and she showed me exactly what it would take for me to get there.
* * *
By the end of the 2012 school year, I was obsessed with training. College was winding down and I had a severe case of senioritis. Any spare moments I had were filled with training. I thought they were joking when Elvar and the coaches at Bootcamp would force me to take rest days periodically. They were very serious and they could see my obsession. Competing was always on the forefront of my mind, and I would daydream about the upcoming Regionals.
Our graduation date for school was the exact same weekend as the Regionals. I went home and told Amma about the conflict.
“Oh, so you can’t compete?” she said, faking disappointment, but grinning ear to ear.
“Oh no, Amma. You know I’m competing,” I replied. The smile on my face grew to match hers.
May 2012
My first Regional experience was like something out of a storybook. I had been to a handful of local competitions but nothing could have prepared me for the experience that awaited me in Copenhagen at the Ballerup Super Arena. What I felt there was totally different from anything I had ever experienced and I fell in love with competing all over again.
All weekend long it was the Thorisdottir-versus-Davidsdottir show. Annie took five first-place finishes and one second place—to me. I was the only one who beat her in an event that year. It was the first Regional in which I never finished worse than third place in any event. I took second place and secured a place at the CrossFit Games. It was a good result to say the least, and I was exploding with joy at the end of the weekend.
What I had enjoyed about local competitions was amplified a thousand times by what I experienced in Copenhagen. I had the time of my life on the big stage. I felt like I had been put on this Earth to compete. I felt superhuman when the crowd cheered. I found that I could feed off the energy and the applause. I was doing things I never dreamed I could do. It was absolutely crazy.
My family made the trip over from Iceland, which meant the world to me. I could always find them in the sea of fans by listening for Amma. She was a superfan and had been to dozens of my local competitions. She was so loud she would embarrass my mom, who would move away from her to avoid guilt by association. I loved having her there to see me perform.
At Regionals I w
as in seventh heaven and I could not imagine how the experience could be topped. If the Regionals felt this good, then the CrossFit Games were going to feel like ecstasy.
6
ROOKIE
NÝLIÐI
The only sin is mediocrity.
—MARTHA GRAHAM
June 2012
“Did you really just go for a run?”
My friends were razzing me from their beach chairs, as they shielded their eyes from the midmorning sun over my shoulder.
“Yeah. Wanna join me for burpees and windsprints?” I poked back.
A few brave souls had accepted my offer over the past few weeks. None had lasted very long. Most people tried to make me feel like I was some obsessed fitness freak. I found this funny because I wasn’t doing nearly as much training as I should be.
I had returned from Regionals on Monday and made a same-day turnaround for a graduation trip to Majorca. Three hundred Icelandic college kids would make the Spanish island home base for two weeks of debauchery and celebration at an all-expenses-paid resort. It was a typical postgraduation “get drunk” trip for everyone and they were sprawled in all directions on the Mediterranean beaches. Everyone except for me. That’s why my friends were giving me a hard time.
Most people followed the basic itinerary of day drinking followed by night blackouts. Wake-up calls were very late, except for the professional partiers who would set their alarms for 7 a.m. to reserve a sun bench where they could sleep it off before revving back up. This was obviously not the recommended preparation for the CrossFit Games.
I had tried alcohol before but I wasn’t drawn to it, and I was certainly not a heavy drinker. Even before I took CrossFit seriously, drinking was reserved for special occasions, and this didn’t qualify in my book. I didn’t drink a sip or party at all for the week I was there. It was a difficult position to put myself in. I was there with all my friends and this was a time we could never get back. But as much as I wanted to relax and have fun, my excitement for my first CrossFit Games overshadowed everything else. Dreams of competing in Southern California invaded my thoughts constantly throughout the day.
With limited time and equipment, I did what I could to at least maintain my fitness. I would get up early and try to do something healthy. It was hardly adequate and I was itching to put in actual work. I would get back from runs to a pile of humans, barely conscious after very little sleep.
It was hard to relax even when I did try. My mind was preoccupied with how other girls were preparing for the Games. I was eager to get back home and get back to training. There was no way for me to know that absolutely nothing on this island could prepare me for the next beach I would face on the California coast in less than three months.
The Majorca trip also signaled my move to the next level, academically. Lots of people leave school after college in Iceland, but for me it was a foregone conclusion that I would attend university. I was eager to learn and I came from an academic family. But I was facing dilemmas. I had always been a phenomenal student and had gotten good grades. Things came to me easily but I still put in a lot of work. In university, you had to choose how to direct your studies.
Choosing a path in university felt daunting, because it locked you into a specialty. This was the first step toward your chosen field, and to be successful and graduate you would have to stick with it. All my mentors pushed me toward engineering for its practicality. I had always been good at math and rational thinking—there was a direct career path. It just made sense.
I was completely lost when I entered university. My whole life I had wanted to be just like my grandfather. I grew up thinking that I was going to be a lawyer, and then a diplomat. Now I didn’t know what I wanted to do and I was suddenly questioning my desires. For two years, medicine had interested me greatly, so instead of dedicating my extracurriculars to easy classes like some of my friends did, I took physiology and biology classes to bolster my knowledge of the human body and how it operated.
I have an excessive need for pleasing people and because of it I am fairly easy to influence. I was feeling lost already and honestly I found it easier to do what other people wanted me to do. It’s a characteristic I work hard to combat, but my desire to please others sometimes supplants my own thought process. I still have a tough time making decisions and expressing when I’m happy or not happy with something.
My trusted mentors offered a mixed bag when I sought their advice. While my grandparents would talk extensively about my choices, they would never actually tell me what they thought I should do. My father, on the other hand, would tell me exactly what he thought I should do. He was always like that, I suppose. My mom split the difference fifty-fifty and would offer an opinion, but not a strong one. She was being rational and suggested I play toward my strengths.
My dad likes to push me, and since he was pushing the hardest, I thought, Okay, I’ll try what he’s pushing for, which was engineering. I’m pretty sure most kids who attend university go through something similar. I applied for engineering without really even knowing what engineers are and what they do. I told myself that it made practical sense because it lined up with my talents.
* * *
Where there was uncertainty in my academic life, my year in athletics had gone amazingly well. I was winning every competition and getting a tremendous amount of attention for it. Everyone seemed interested in my story and what I would be able to do when I arrived in California.
I had never been very good at gymnastics, so all the attention and success was new to me. My classmates all knew how well I was doing and would ask me all about it; my friends and everyone I knew were cheering me on. I felt like a celebrity, and I was so excited for the Games.
I didn’t think I was going to California to win the Games, but in my mind I was going to be in contention, and I had good reason to believe I could do it. I had enough experience training with Annie to know that she could beat me head to head, but I had also pulled out some wins and kept her close when she finished ahead. I was confident that I would at least be in the conversation, and I was okay with that for year one. I expected things to play out like they had at Regionals. There would be lots of attention on me, which was good. I loved the pressure of being on the competition floor and my best performances came when I could thrive on the energy of the crowd.
I continued to train hard all summer and I thought I was doing everything right with my diet. I was neurotic and I would go so far as to remove the chocolate nibs from my trail mix. My intake, however, was completely unrestricted. I would eat handfuls of nuts all the time. I had no concept of weighing and measuring or concern for portion sizes. I set rules and followed all of them, but I was confused. Not one gram of sugar or one slice of bread passed my lips, but I was smashing almond butter and tons of cream in my coffee.
In my mind I was doing everything right. In my mind I was working so hard. But in reality I had no idea what was going on or what to expect. I could cycle a barbell easily and moderate time domains, but efforts that went over ten minutes would punish me, and I had focused less on running. Elvar had been doing his best, and would give me as much direction as he could provide, but ultimately he wasn’t my coach.
Getting to the Games is also expensive, and I was a college student with no job. I didn’t have any money. Flights alone cost close to $1,200 each way and we had to be there so early that paying for accommodations in that part of Los Angeles was going to be virtually impossible to cover. I ran fund-raisers all summer with the help of Bootcamp. We sold shirts; we had an executive chef who would buy meat in bulk and help me sell it off. We made trail mix to sell for members. We ran a competition and barbecue with a donation for admission. Training and recovery were obviously important, but if I didn’t hustle I wasn’t even going to get to California.
Sveinbjörn Sveinbjörnsson was an individual competitor at the 2009 Games in Aromas—the same year Annie made her first appearance. He and his wife traveled to L.A. with me to offer w
hatever help and wisdom they could provide. They were amazingly kind, but their presence was more for emotional support and logistics. He was the most qualified of all the people in the gym, but he had never coached an athlete through the Games.
When I arrived, I was starstruck immediately. I saw Camille Leblanc-Bazinet. I had spent countless hours watching Cami on YouTube while I obsessed over muscle-ups. She was the best in the world at them. I completely froze and did not know what to say. It was a weird feeling that was completely foreign to me. We had celebrities in Iceland and it wasn’t a big deal when you saw them. This was different, and it intimidated the hell out of me.
I felt like all the girls had deep friendships and had known each other for years. I got the sinking feeling immediately that I did not belong here. I started to shrink into myself and shy away from everyone even more. I’m sure there were other girls just like me, but I was swimming in my own head and the competition didn’t start for a week. I didn’t speak to one person that year.
On Monday, Games director Dave Castro announced a surprise event at Camp Pendleton on Wednesday. There had never been a Wednesday event, and I had no idea what kind of a “camp” we were heading to. On Tuesday we were given the opportunity to test the water and practice using our gear in the Pacific Ocean. Swimming is a rite of passage in Iceland. We are great swimmers. However, we are brought up in pools. I had never swum in the open ocean. I was already on my heels and feeling nervous.
Dottir Page 8
