Two-Time CrossFit Games Champion Justin Medeiros Faces Six Weeks With His Jaw Wired Shut

• American two-time CrossFit Games champion Justin Medeiros broke and dislocated his jaw in several places when a driver made an illegal U-turn in front of his motorcycle on September 21.
• Surgeons plated the jaw the next day and wired it shut for six weeks, which puts him on blended chicken and broccoli and pulled him out of Wodapalooza SoCal.
• Medeiros calls the injuries fixable, but reports say he is extremely unlikely to race the Rogue Invitational in Scotland starting October 30.

A Small Motorcycle, a Sudden U-Turn, and Five Minutes He Cannot Remember

Justin Medeiros opened his eyes on the pavement and could not say how he got there. “The next thing I remember, I was opening my eyes on the pavement,” the two-time CrossFit Games champion said after the crash. He remembers reaching for the brakes. He does not remember the impact.

The crash happened on Monday morning, September 21, at about 11:30. Medeiros, who was born in Lodi, California, and moved to Vancouver, Washington, to train under coach Adam Neiffer, was riding a Honda Monkey, a compact motorcycle he bought after winning the 2021 CrossFit Games. Another driver made an illegal U-turn directly in front of him. Reports say he lay unconscious for roughly five minutes, and a nurse who saw the crash stayed with him until paramedics arrived. Neither report names the city where it happened.

Testing at the hospital that day found a broken and dislocated jaw in multiple places, extensive damage to his teeth, a hematoma in one ear that affected his hearing, and a significant concussion. The scans cleared his brain and neck, and doctors found no other fractures. “I got off very lucky,” he said. Surgeons operated the next day, plating the jaw, realigning teeth and wiring the jaw shut.

Afterward he could not reach his fiancée, Ellie Turner, another CrossFit competitor. Turner races on the same Outcasts team he was set to captain that weekend.

What Six Weeks on a Liquid Diet Looks Like for a Full-Time Athlete

The wires stay in for six weeks. A wired jaw holds the upper and lower teeth together so the broken bones can knit, and it rules out chewing, so everything Medeiros eats has to pass through a blender. His current menu, by his own account, is chicken and broccoli puréed into a drink. His main worry, according to The Barbell Spin, is losing too much body mass while he cannot eat normally.

Medeiros is listed at 190 pounds and 5 feet 9 inches, a build that carries a lot of muscle for a man his size. He joked on the Boys Interrupted podcast that the swelling in his face makes him look like he weighs 300 pounds. He sounded upbeat on the show, and the reports describe him as in good spirits. Neither one describes what training looks like for the next six weeks, and with a concussion and an ear injury on the list, a return to normal sessions is not something he has promised.

For anyone who has trained for a Hyrox, a DEKA or a CrossFit Open workout, the practical lesson is close to home. A fitness routine that has taken years to build can stop in a single morning, and the first job afterward is eating enough of the right things to hold onto what you have. Medeiros is a professional with a coach and a medical team. The everyday athletes who lift and race in the same gyms face the same basic problem with fewer resources.

Wodapalooza Without Its Team Captain

Medeiros announced his withdrawal on September 22 with a short Instagram post. “I’m okay, but unfortunately I was involved in an accident,” he wrote, adding that he would miss Wodapalooza that weekend and would be back soon. He had been named captain of the Outcasts for Battle of the Camps, a team event at Gymreapers Wodapalooza SoCal in Huntington Beach, California, where athletes race under camp banners rather than as individuals.

The festival ran September 25 to 27 without him. As the Hybrid Chronicle preview of the weekend reported, more than 2,500 athletes signed up across upward of 30 divisions, and most of them raced in community divisions that run from teens and masters to adaptive pairs. Medeiros’s absence took a headliner off the marquee. It left thousands of everyday competitors racing on the sand with the same workouts and the same crowds.

His next scheduled appearance is the Rogue Invitational, which runs October 30 to November 2 at P&J Live in Aberdeen, Scotland. Medeiros won the Invitational in 2021 and 2022 and is still on the roster, but reports call his participation “extremely unlikely” and expect organizers to name a replacement. If the six weeks count from the surgery date, the wires come off in early November, just after the final day of the event.

A Champion Who Has Been Down This Road Before

Medeiros started CrossFit in seventh grade, at age 12, while wrestling and playing football in high school, and he gave up football after his sophomore year to focus on the sport. He studied kinesiology at Boise State University. In 2021 he won the CrossFit Games at 22, the youngest man to do so at the time, and he repeated in 2022.

A bike also figured in the worst stretch of his competitive career. At the 2023 Games he fell from the bike in the Ride event and finished 29th, then placed 37th in the next event, the two lowest finishes he had recorded. He climbed back to finish 13th overall that year, then 8th in 2024 and 7th in 2025. He has come back from a bad stretch before, though a fractured jaw and a concussion are a different kind of setback from a bad event.

For now the plan is simple and slow. Medeiros has been open about the damage and about how he sees it. “All this is fixable!” he wrote after thanking the people who reached out. The next six weeks will test that claim one blended meal at a time.

For newcomers who follow the sport from the edges, the story carries a plain message about what the people at the top of it go through. They keep motorcycles in the garage and race beside family, and a routine morning can change a season. The community that turned out at Huntington Beach without its captain is the same community that will be waiting when he can chew again.