Meet the fittest woman on earth

Source: Best Health magazine, November/December 2014; Image: Andrew Neugebauer

If you want to be the best, you have to train like a champ. That was the fitness mantra 26-year-old CrossFit athlete Camille Leblanc-Bazinet used while training for the 2014 Reebok CrossFit Games in Carson, California, this past July. The Richelieu, Que., native placed first in the women’s individual competition, earning her the amazing title of ‘Fittest Woman on Earth.’

The full-time chemical engineering student at l’Université de Sherbrooke managed to train five to six days a week for an average of four hours each day. ‘Discipline is number one,’ she says. ‘You have to be able to do things that others won’t.’

In addition to the thrill of winning the title’which involved endurance races, gymnastics and weight-lifting’Leblanc-Bazinet says she is proud of how the sport is changing perceptions about women’s fitness. ‘We want to be viewed as strong and independent,’ she says. ‘CrossFit makes women feel confident, like they can protect themselves and take on anything.’ She says she used to strive to be thin, but her only focus now is on being as fit and healthy as she can be. ‘Performance wins over everything, especially aesthetics.’

Leblanc-Bazinet hopes to win the title again at next year’s CrossFit Games, and has her sights set on women’s weightlifting at the 2016 Rio Olympics. It seems this woman is on a winning streak.