Geens misses final clean as Haapalainen, Meha claim Far East Throwdown berths
Geens needed one 225-pound hang power clean and missed it, handing Henrik Haapalainen the Far East Throwdown’s lone men’s Games berth in Busan. Siria Meha and CrossFit Aylesbury claimed the other tickets.
One missed clean decided a weekend built on razor-thin margins. In Busan, South Korea, Sven Geens walked to the bar needing a 225-pound hang power clean in the final event and missed the last rep, a failure that sealed Henrik Haapalainen’s path to the 2026 CrossFit Games and underscored how little room there was for error when only one man, one woman and one team could advance.
Haapalainen finished the men’s division with 567 points, enough to edge Hiko O Te Rangi Curtis, who took second at 546. Geens ended third with 534, and his final rep became the defining image of the Far East Throwdown, a Seminfinal built to turn one lift into a season-changing swing.
Siria Meha handled that pressure best on the women’s side, closing with 594 points and the lone women’s qualifying spot. Anna Ivanova stayed in the race until the end and placed second with 561, while Dawon Jung followed in third at 558 and Samantha Pugh finished fourth with 549. In a field packed with international experience, Meha never gave the rest of the pack a clean opening.
The team race was just as tight at the top. CrossFit Aylesbury claimed the berth with 573 points, only six clear of Team Enuf at 567. Marvel Black was next at 528, with Seym and Team Alltra One tied at 522, a finish that reflected how compressed the leaderboard stayed through the final scoring.
CrossFit listed the Far East Throwdown as one of the in-person Semifinals in the 2026 season, and the event served as the final qualifying stage for the Games. The online qualifier that fed Busan accepted athletes internationally with no regional restrictions, sending the top 30 men, top 30 women and top 20 teams into the semifinal. For a field that broad, the cut was brutally narrow.
The results locked in another piece of the 2026 CrossFit Games field headed to San Jose, California. In Busan, though, the lesson was sharper: when a Semifinal offers only one ticket per division, the difference between making it and missing out can come down to a single rep.
Know something we missed? Have a correction or additional information?
Submit a Tip
