Mat Fraser, the “world's fittest man” hails from Sharbot Lake

Jeff Green | Jul 27, 2016

After finishing second in both 2014 and 2015, Mat Fraser easily won the 2016 Reebok Crossfit games, the elite event in a sport that tests strength, agility and endurance with a large number of extreme events.

Forty top male and 40 top female finishers from qualifying events around the United States gathered at the Stubhub Centre in Los Angeles last Wednesday (July 20). They were bussed to an airport and flown to an unknown location. This year it was a place called The Ranch, the same location where the original Crossfit Games took place in 2009.

They completed three events at the ranch on day 1 of the five-day, 15-event competition.

The first event was a 7 km run, which included three 1 km loops on flat pavement, and 4 km climbing up and down hills with steepness ranging up to 50 degrees. That event was followed by a dead lift event with 20 weights ranging from 415 to 625 pounds. The final event of day 1 was known as a chipper. A 30 lb soft ball has to be tossed over an 8 foot mark on a wall 50 times and then the ball is carried to a kind of sit up machine. The athlete does 30 situps while rolling the ball and up and down their body, making sure it touches the ground on the way back and a bar on the way up. Finally, the athlete runs up a steep hill, while still carrying the ball.

Mat Fraser finished first in the 7 km run, tied for 23rd in the deadlift (by far his lowest result in the five-day championships) and finished 2nd in the Chipper. He was in the overall lead by the end of day 1, and never looked back.

The athletes then returned to the StubHub Centre, and completed 12 more events over a four-day period. The events included a 280 metre handstand walk; a swim; weightlifting and gymnastic events and a sprint event; all culminating in Redemption, which features six climbs up a pegboard wall alternating with barbell thrusts.

Mat Fraser did not win a single event after the 7km run, but he reeled off seven 2nd place event finishes, including three in a row at one point, along with a 4th, a 5th, two 6ths and two 10ths. He was so dominant that he could have sat out the last three events in the competition and still won the overall title on points.

By the end of the games, he had beaten the second-place finisher, Ben Smith, by 194 points.

It was indeed redemption for Fraser, who was beaten by Smith last year. Fraser even finished 2nd in the final event, in front of a capacity crowd at the StubHub Centre, which included his ecstatic parents, Don and Candy.

Mat Fraser is from Sharbot Lake. His parents Don and Candy were Canadian Champion Pairs Figure Skaters in 1975 and 1976 and competed in the 1976 Olympics. They went on to win the World Professional Pairs Championships in 1983 and 1984 and are still remembered as the only pairs team to perform what became their signature move as professionals, the no-hands death spiral.

They lived in Sharbot Lake in the late 1980s and early 1990s while Candy practised medicine at the Sharbot Lake Medical Clinic. They then moved to Vermont and have lived there ever since, but have never cut ties to Sharbot Lake.

Don's mother, Dorothy Fraser, has been a mainstay of the Sharbot Lake 39'ers for many years and still lives on Wagner Road, where Don has been seen often lately, as he is building a new house.

Mat has also maintained contacts with friends in Sharbot Lake over the years.

(The CrossFit Games events are available on Youtube, including the final event and celebration.)

The final event is captured here - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iGb3pPp0idE – Mat Fraser comes up at about the two-hour mark)