Mat Fraser, five-time CrossFit Games champion, announces his retirement
Mat Fraser picked up CrossFit on a whim.
He leaves it as a legend — the Fittest Man in history.
The record-setting CrossFit Games champion has decided to retire from competition, he announced Tuesday via social media.
"Like so many others that wandered into a CrossFit gym, I wasn't expecting to find my best friends, business partners, wife, countless life lessons, and 5 gold medals," wrote Fraser, 31, on his Instagram account.
The Vermont native won his fifth-consecutive crown last October to break away from Rich Froning for the most titles all-time. He also owns the most career event wins (24) and wins in a single Games (14).
Fraser even trained for a while at Froning's CrossFit Mayhem in Cookeville, Tennessee.
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"From now on, decisions I make won't be solely based off how they affect my performance, but how they affect my family, friends, health and happiness," Fraser wrote. "I look forward to remaining a part of the CrossFit community, I just won't be doing it from the competition floor any longer."
Fraser, whose parents figure skated for Canada as a pair at the 1976 Winter Olympics, came to the sport in 2012 after recovering from a back injury that derailed his career as a competitive weightlifter training for a spot on the U.S. Olympic team.
He finished second in his CrossFit Games debut in 2014 and matched the feat a year later before embarking on his history-making run of five consecutive championships.
Later Tuesday, he posted a first-person account of why he made the decision on morningchalkup.com, writing, in part: "For eight years, every day has been roughly the same: wake up earlier than I’d like, sell my soul to the Assault Bike and the swimming intervals and the 40-minute AMRAPs, eat, sleep, repeat.
"No decision was unintentional."