Mathew Edward Fraser (born 1990) is a retired Canadian-American professional CrossFit athlete, competing from 2014 to 2020.

[5] He was a favorite to win in 2015 with the retirement of four-time defending champion Rich Froning Jr., but was edged out in the final event by Ben Smith.

He was athletic from a young age, learning to swim when he was one, water-ski at 18 months, downhill ski at two, and walk on hands for a dozen paces when he was seven.

After his surgery, Fraser enrolled at the Olympic Education Center at Northern Michigan University to study math and physics while he was on his rehabilitation.

[20][10] He gave up weightlifting as a sport after two years in Michigan, and went to Rocky Mountain House in Alberta to work on the oil fields for four months,[21] before returning to Vermont to start a double major course in mechanical engineering and business and a double minor in math and engineering management at the University of Vermont in Burlington.

[23] Although he had originally intended to pursue a career in engineering, a stint as a summer intern in an aerospace company in 2014 convinced him to focus on CrossFit.

[16][26] He injured his back in 2009, but not knowing that he had a broken vertebra, he went on to compete in the Junior World Weightlifting Championship in Bucharest, Romania, and ended up 15th out of 16 in the 77 kg men category.

[18][32] Fraser started training in a CrossFit box (gym) while he was still competing in weightlifting – he was looking for a place to do Olympic lifts to keep himself fit when he was home in Vermont during a school break from Michigan.

[20][39] In 2015, Froning had retired from individual competitions, and Fraser was widely expected to win the 2015 CrossFit Games.

[41][42] Fraser later described his second place as a "devastating loss" and his "biggest failure", a "lesson I will reflect on the rest of my life".

He won with a 197-point lead over second-place Ben Smith, which was the biggest margin of victory in the history of the Games.

[53][10] Fraser qualified for the 2019 CrossFit Games by winning the first sanctioned event held in Dubai under the new qualification system.

He started well with two wins, but stumbled on day 2 of the competition and trailed Ohlsen in points by the end of the day – a sandbag falling out of his bag in the 6k Ruck event near the end of the race resulted in a 60-second penalty and a 17th-place finish,[56] followed by a worse 21st finish in Sprint Couplet.

Fraser dominated this much-reduced group of athletes, winning ten of the twelve events and only dropping to second place in Swim 'N' Stuff and CrossFit Total.

[69][70][71] He partnered with the filmmakers Buttery Bros to announce the launch of a supplement company named Podium Nutrition with its product release scheduled in July 2021.

[77][18] He did not maintain a special diet and would often eat an entire pint of ice cream or a half-dozen donuts.

[78][79][80] He does not adhere to a specific diet like paleo (he found that it gave him insufficient energy) or counting macros, which is common in CrossFit.

[80] Fraser tended to consume four to five big calorie-dense meals a day when training for competition, which were mainly meat and vegetables, along with sticky white rice.

[78] During training, he took supplements such as branched-chain amino acids, pre-workout (including beta-alanine), and cannabidiol (for sleep),[79] and drinks protein shakes and smoothies, snacks on Snickers bars, gummies, and fruits during workout sessions, and Gatorade after the hardest session.

[79] Fraser did not have a fixed set of training routines in the early years when he competed,[78] but later he would have daily exercises involving Assault Bike and swimming intervals and 40-minute AMRAPs (as many reps as possible).

[89][87] In Vermont, he trained at Champlain Valley CrossFit and a home gym in the basement of his parents' house.

[105][106] Fraser has sponsorship deals with a number of companies, including Nike, Rogue, Athletic Brewing, Gowod, and Beam.

[80][107][79][108] Fraser's Nike sportswear, such as his personal editions of Metcon cross-training shoes,[109][110][111][112][113] features his motto "Hard Work Pays Off" or its acronym HWPO.