The Games Are Coming: Sheila Barden

Starting on 19th July, the CrossFit Games, unlike the European Union, shows no signs of getting any smaller. The Games started in 2007 on a small ranch in Aromas, California. The winning woman, Jolie Gentry, was awarded $500. This year the prize pot is a cool $2.2m. Athletes from 175 different countries participated in qualifying for this year's Games. Now the top 40 women will do battle for the title "Fittest on Earth", currently still in the possession of Iceland's Katrín Tanja Davíðsdóttir.

As has become customary on FMS, our CrossFit correspondent Aiden has been analysing the field so you don't have to and has hand-picked a selection of the finest "Crossfit talent". We'll be meeting all five of his selections this week, along with two FMS picks - though we don't know much about CrossFit, we do know what we like!

SHEILA BARDEN USA



28-year-old Sheila is an action-packed 5'0" and started with CrossFit in 2011.




Tackle Football. That's right, I played on an all boys team, and I was a captain.
What of it? I've won a dodgeball championship or two in my life as well.
I eat when I'm hungry, which happens to be all the time, and I eat a lot.
Just trying to upgrade my wardrobe to medium.



This is the "biggest" I've ever been in my life, 134lbs and jacked. It's a strange mental place I often find myself in, to live in a body that is natural, yet have people tell me I look like a man, I'm too muscular or so many other rude comments. I don't care.
Let me repeat that in case you chose to skip that last sentence, your opinion of me does not bother me or affect me in any way. I've worked really hard for 4½ years, I eat more than most grown men, and I love my body.



I do everything in my life hard and fast. Life is hard when you're a CrossFit addict.



Sheila is on Instagram.

Another of Aiden's five-to-watch tomorrow.