Sam Briggs’ Second Act

The van was upside down.

Sam Briggs didn’t think. She just acted. 

She pulled over and ran to the wreck.

Any children in the back? No. 

She stepped around to the front where a woman dangled in the driver’s seat, suspended by her seat belt. Her injuries were severe.

“She didn’t need cutting out,” Briggs recalled, “but I didn’t want to release her from it in case I made the injuries worse, because obviously I had nothing to try and support her neck.” 

A bystander had already called 9-1-1, so Briggs focused on keeping the woman calm and conscious. 

“I just tried to keep it lighthearted,” she said. “So I was like, ‘You might not understand me, but I’m from the U.K. It’s not you losing your hearing; I’ve got a funny accent.”

First responders would be there soon, Briggs assured the woman, also performing her own unofficial assessment.

“Can you feel everything? Do you have any numbness or tingling?” Briggs asked. 

After first responders had whisked the woman away, a sense of certainty fell over Briggs. 

“I’m meant to do this,” she thought to herself. “I’m meant to go back.” 

It was 2010.

Briggs had just finished Pyramid Double Helen’s first 1,200-meter-run leg, starting the CrossFit Games event with what an announcer called a “blistering” pace she couldn’t possibly maintain. She didn’t win the event — not by a long shot — but it wasn’t because of the run. 

“It was the other stuff in between,” she said. 

That’s around when, Briggs estimated, people started calling her “The Engine.” Fitting, considering she spent most of her time working on one with West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue in the U.K. 

Service was in her blood: Her father was a police officer and her mother, a nurse. Briggs considered both options for her own career, choosing firefighting for its physical demands. 

She served until 2013, when she resigned to focus on CrossFit after winning the Games that season. Since then, she’s become one of the most celebrated athletes in the sport, with 11 Games appearances (nine individual, two masters) and two podium finishes (her 2013 championship and a second-place finish in the Women’s 35-39 division in 2018). 

But competitive careers don’t last forever — indeed, Briggs had dealt with more than a few aches and pains — and returning to fire service had always been in the back of Briggs’ mind. 

The car crash, which occurred in the summer of 2021, brought it racing to the front. In early 2022, she announced her retirement from the sport at the end of the season. 

“That was the turning point,” Briggs said. 

Though she was still in it for the 2022 season, Briggs began preparing for life after competition right away.

Having been out of the fire service for so long — and living in the U.S. now, to boot — to return, she’d need to get certified all over again. In Ohio, where she lives and trains, the age cutoff for finishing the program is 41 — and Briggs was 40. 

That meant full days of classes at the fire academy and long nights spent studying for the 22 exams she faced over the course of 18 weeks. Though she only had time for about an hour of training per day, Briggs wasn’t fazed by the transition from full- to part-time athlete. 

“There was really no time to miss being a competitive athlete because my schedule was all of a sudden more full than it had been in the last 20 years,” she said. “It was just kind of like ‘bish-bash-bosh,’ straight in.”

On Aug. 29, 2022, Briggs was sworn in as a firefighter for the city of West Chester, Ohio. 

“Honored and excited to serve the community once again,” she posted to Instagram. 

Briggs works as a backstep on her crew, so named for the actual tailboard, or back step, at the rear of the truck that linemen would ride on. It’s where the newest to the crew go. 

“We’re gonna be the ones going into the fire, we’re gonna be the ones cutting up the car in a car wreck — we’re expected to be hands-on,” she explained. “The hardest workers on scene should be the firefighters in the back.”

Briggs works the standard 24 hours on, 48 hours off, living at the station for the 24 she’s working. And despite having been an officer in her previous firefighting years, as a newbie still in her probationary period, Briggs gets to clean the toilets.

“I don’t mind,” she said. “I’m not scared of some hard work. … To be back as a new person having to do more than your fair share — it’s fun. It’s why I joined the fire service in the first place; to get my hands dirty; to go into fires and work my ass off.”

That’s why she chose to work for one of the area’s busiest departments. 

“I want to be actually going out there and serving the community,” Briggs said. “I don’t want to be (in a) quiet station just twiddling my thumbs; I’d rather be getting stuck in and doing stuff.” 

In a typical 24-hour shift, Briggs and her crew will respond to about 10 calls. Most aren’t fires — those come in about once a month — but rather medical emergencies. 

Even so, fitness is essential. 

“Unfortunately, the way that a lot of the community is now, we’re having to (assist) more of the obese population,” she said. Nearly 47% of Ohioans are obese — more than the national prevalence of just under 42%. 

Briggs described a recent call for a man she estimated weighed around 700 pounds.

“And we had to get him down two flights of stairs, into the back of the ambulance, and then at the hospital we had to get him back out of the ambulance and into a hospital bed,” she said. “I weigh 135, but because of the training that I do for CrossFit, I know to leverage myself to put myself in a good position to help lift people.” 

She trains about an hour a day, “mainly to stay fit as a firefighter; not to compete,” she said. 

But evidently, there’s not much of a difference, as Briggs spent the first few days of August in Madison, Wisconsin, competing in the Women’s 40-44 division at the 2023 NOBULL CrossFit Games. 

It was an accident — sort of. 

Brigg’s coach, James Jowsey, hadn’t wanted her to compete in the Open, as she was recovering from a knee injury. 

“But I begged him to let me,” Briggs said. “I was like, ‘Oh, come on, it’ll be fun!’ And I had to promise him that I wouldn’t do anything to set my knee back.”

But what was just a bit of fun in theory turned into a 37th-place division finish in practice. Then a 23rd-place Age-Group Quarterfinal finish.

“And as it happens,  I qualified (for the Games) out of Semifinals,” she said. 

This week marks Briggs’ 11th Games appearance and her first in the 40-44 division. 

“Super stoked to be here this week; just here to kind of have fun,” she said before the competition began.

As it turns out, fun looks a lot like winning. Out of eight tests, Briggs won three, took two second-place finishes, and never placed lower than 10th. She won the division by 30 points, adding a third CrossFit Games medal to her collection. 

“Once you’ve been a competitor, it never leaves you,” she said after the competition.

And the advantage of a 13-year competitive career, she said, is all between the ears. 

“You learn how to pace and kind of where you can push and where you can’t,” she continued. “And you don’t get disappointed with events that you don’t do as well in, so it’s easier to bounce back instead of dwelling on that.”’

For the rest of the week, Briggs will turn her focus to Emma McQuaid, coaching her through her fifth CrossFit Games appearance. Then come Tuesday, The Engine’s back at it with a 24-hour shift. 

And in 2024? 

“I go to medic school next year, so I definitely won’t be doing anything next year,” she said. 

We’ll see. 

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About the Author

Brittney Saline is Senior Writer and Editor for CrossFit, LLC. Previously, she was a writer and editor for the CrossFit Journal. She’s been sharing powerful stories from and for the CrossFit community since 2012, covering topics ranging from problems with healthcare and Big Pharma to CrossFit’s potential for reversing symptoms of Parkinson’s disease to discourses on femininity and musculature. She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and her favorite CrossFit workouts feature lots of heavy lifting. Got a story to share? Email Brittney here.