The Wildcard Open 2026

With what feels like a blink of an eye, the Wildcard 2026 Open is over. The race to victory was a VERY close battle, with all teams putting in a huge effort and everyone who took part should be very proud. Sadly there can only be one winner and the mighty blues have won by a slim four point margin over the black team.

Official standings:

Blue - 234

Black - 230

Green - 222

White - 193

Grey - 171

Red - 163

Teams earned lots of points during the final week of the Open and I wanted to break down the run up to crowning our winners. All teams put up a fantastic effort over the three weeks, the first award to be given out in the final week was for, ‘Best dressed’.

Each team turned up in some great costumes: wizards, peas, pilots, Men in black, but nothing could compare to the dedication required to do 16 minutes of hard effort dressed as a Smurf with blue bodypaint streaming into your eyes! Well done the Blues!

Next was the latest edition to the Open, ‘The cook off’, Not to be confused with a bake off…

We had two fantastic judges for this award, Graeme and Steph who sampled 18 dishes in total ranging from pulled pork to Bruschetta. Every team can cook it seems as they struggled to determine a winner purely based off the food put up for judging. It came down to overall effort and with teams creating props, decorating tables and printing menus, our judges had to look at the whole package to decide. The might blues locked up the 20 points by printing a fantastic menu, table decorations alongside an incredible spread of food.

This means they took home 40 of the 81 points up for grabs not including those awarded for completing the workout on Friday night lights.

Moving onto the best award to give out during the open: ‘Spirit of the Open’.

Not an easy award to win as there is no real criteria to hit.

This year, we feel the winner truly embodies the Wildcard spirit and brought that to gym across the Open and Friday night lights, each week.

Spirit of the Wildcard Open 2026 is - Calum Walker

We often find Cal (A.K.A C-Willy) in the gym grafting away in some questionable attire. He has been a member for a few years now (you may recognise him from our calendar..) and if you have ever managed to catch him for a chat you’ll quickly realise you wish you hadn’t… (jokes)

Always the first person to offer advice and guidance to anyone of any ability level and over the Open we witnessed this first hand. Each week at Friday night lights he turned up, got involved whether he was doing the workout or not and stayed late into the evening to cheer on other members. He put up some serious scores across the Open and became an example that being a great athlete doesn’t mean you rise above the tide, it means you try to lift others up with you.

Something Wildcard lives by.

Well done Cal, his team (black) were rewarded with 20 points.

26.3 saw some big score and we took the top five from each team RX & Scaled to give us an accumulative score. The winners of 26.3 were:

White team - 1,016

Green team - 989

Grey - 948

They locked up, 10 points for White, 7 for Green and 4 for the Grey team. After the major points awarded, we had Guess the WOD. Well done Dannii of Green team for locking up 5 points by having the closest guess and the earliest.

Attendance was where the points mattered the most:

Green - 59

Blue - 58

Red - 52

White - 50

Grey - 46

Black - 44

This is what created the gaps and allowed the leaderboard to be the very close race it was in the end. This year we wanted victory to come down to a team effort and that every bit of effort put into the workout, challenges and team spirit was helping towards the overall score. It is testament to the captains and athletes involved, that this race was so close because we had such a huge level of engagement from everyone.

Final note from me goes out to some highlights and special mentions,

Graeme Brannen, this legend messaged before the Open even began, asking how he could help be a part of the action as he could not compete due to injury. I have heard nothing but positive things about his judging, attitude and presence during Friday night lights. A real gentleman and we thank you so much Graeme for being apart of this years Open.

Sophie Reader, A new addition to the Wildcard community who impressed the coaches with her efforts during the first week of team challenges. Faced with a shoulder injury she turned up, with more tape on her shoulder than a last minute wrapped Christmas present, and rowed/ski’ed with her good arm just to help get some points for her team. True Grit and that’s something we loved to see right out the gate.

The captains. Hand selecting captains is always a risk because we are aware it is a big ask and after all, everyone has full time jobs, lives, children and other responsibilities besides the Open at the gym. This year the captains did a fantastic job at sacking off all of the above and putting in a real shift to help make this Open special (just kidding, only Captain Julia sacked off her job). From videos coming out of the black team chat from Timmsy, Rebecca Roberts essentially living in the gym cheering on everyone and being a great motivator, Bethan showing true competitive spirit, Ciara ensuring everyone remembered Grey team existed, Elliot coming out of his shell to lead his team. Finally, Julia who was always smiling and reminding us that this is just a bit of fun along side telling us that Blue team were the best. To be fair, she was not wrong.

The Wildcard team, from having Coach Toby onboard to bring another level of expertise to the table and programming fantastic team challenges. Priz for letting me (Coach Jake) run wild (Pun intended) with the logistics and organisation. Laure, Jacob, Connor, Sian and Ugo for helping the vibes, running of FNL, taking part and leading from the front.

This rounds out another year of Open shenanigans, It has been a blast and for me personally, I think this has been one of/ if not my favourite year of running the Open at Wildcard.

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Roll on the Wildcard Open 2027!

#WEAREWILDCARD

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