Christian Lucero is back in the mix. After suffering an injury at the 2017 California Regional, Lucero has made a comeback entering the 2020 CrossFit Games season.

Lucero competed at the 2016 CrossFit Games where he finished 18th overall. He came into the 2017 California as the favorite, but he injured his pec muscle on a ring muscle-up during the 5th workout. Lucero was in 1st place before withdrawing from the competition.

And then in June 2018, Lucero had orthoscopic surgery to remove a “loose body” from his knee.

Fast forward to today, Lucero has been in the mix throughout the 2020 CrossFit Open. Heading into 20.5, Lucero needed a great score to finish in the Top 20 and head back to the CrossFit Games. 

Once the submission deadline for 20.5 had closed, Lucero had a posted time of 10:46. That time would be good (after other assessed penalties) for 24th in the world.

However, this past weekend CrossFit announced the penalties following the 20.5 video review process. Lucero was among 6 athletes to receive major penalties. Sixty seconds were added to Lucero’s time due to lack of height on wall balls. That penalty added 181 points to his total score.

Lucero now sits in 41st overall, well below the Top 20 blue line. Without the penalty, Lucero would have ~358 points and would be in 30th overall. That is technically two spots under the Top 20 cutoff, however, there are three athletes who are planning to go team this year that are in the Top 20 (Rich Froning, Roy Gamboa and Brandon Luckett).

If two of the three end up declining their invitation, Lucero will get the nod and qualify once again for the Games.

Lucero has appealed the ruling and is now awaiting to hear back from CrossFit. We caught up with Lucero to hear how he was notified, what he did to appeal the decision and what his plans are for Sanctionals this season.

Check out the video below or listen to our podcast on iTunes (you can also stream just the audio below as well).