Katrin Davidsdottir narrating her own audiobook Dottir is not a surprising casting choice. It is the only one that makes sense. Two-time CrossFit Games champion Davidsdottir and her best friend Annie Thorisdottir, herself a two-time champion, are among the most recognizable figures in competitive functional fitness. At just over an hour, this short-form production is built around their friendship, their careers, and the texture of daily life at the highest level of their sport. The audiobook carries a 4.8 rating from 758 listeners, a number that signals a deeply engaged audience coming specifically for the personalities involved. Both women are Icelandic athletes whose competitive relationship and personal friendship have made them among the most followed figures in the CrossFit world, and that prior relationship with the audience is what makes a one-hour production viable.
Short-form audiobooks in the sports memoir space often function as extended interviews rather than fully developed narratives, and Dottir sits comfortably in that category. The format Davidsdottir and Thorisdottir have chosen, a conversational discussion of their CrossFit careers, daily rhythms, and future directions, is intimate and immediate rather than structured around a dramatic arc. For listeners familiar with both athletes through competition footage or the CrossFit community, the appeal is direct: this is as close to a candid conversation with both women as the format allows, and Davidsdottir's narration strips away any distance between author and listener.
The low runtime does limit scope. Sixty-two minutes cannot contain a full account of two championship careers, the training cultures that produced them, or the specific challenges of remaining competitive at the Games' highest level across multiple years. What it can do, and genuinely does, is render the quality of a specific athletic friendship: two women who have trained alongside each other, competed against each other, and built a bond that has survived both circumstances. That narrower focus is the audiobook's actual subject, and both athletes handle it with the directness their public profiles are built on. The conversational register throughout reflects how both women actually communicate, which is a significant advantage of self-narration in athletic memoir.
Why Listen to Dottir
Davidsdottir's narration is the production's clearest asset. She does not sound like a trained voice actor, and she does not need to. She sounds like herself, which is exactly what this material requires. Her accent, her rhythm, and the ease with which she discusses training, competition, and the emotional stakes of elite sport give the audiobook a texture that a professional narrator reading her words would not replicate. The same quality applies to Thorisdottir's contributions, since both athletes bring the unperformed authenticity that makes their competitive careers compelling to follow in the first place.
As a listening proposition for CrossFit enthusiasts, the audiobook delivers concentrated insight into how two of the sport's most accomplished competitors understand their own careers and their place in each other's development. The question of what comes after competitive peak is present throughout, and it is treated with more candor than athletes typically risk in public-facing formats. The discussion of daily life alongside professional demands, including friendship routines, personal priorities, and the cost of sustained excellence, adds dimension to portraits that competition coverage tends to flatten into metrics and podium finishes alone. That personal dimension is what justifies the audiobook's existence as a standalone product rather than a podcast episode.
What to Watch For in Dottir
Given the conversational format, the moments where the two women address each other directly are the audiobook's most textured passages. The dynamic between two best friends who are also competitors and training partners is not simple, and even in a short runtime those tensions and complementarities surface in ways that are revealing. Davidsdottir's narration is most candid when the subject is competition psychology, the specific quality of wanting to win against someone you love. Listeners interested in the mental side of elite performance will find those sections worth the full runtime on their own.
The discussion of what comes next is less resolved, as you would expect from a book produced while both careers were still active, but the uncertainty reads as honest rather than a gap in the material. Athletes discussing future uncertainty with genuine openness rather than scripted optimism is rarer than it should be, and both Davidsdottir and Thorisdottir demonstrate that capacity here. The authenticity extends to the portions covering the psychological weight of championships already won and the motivation to pursue further ones when public expectation and internal drive are no longer perfectly aligned.
The Right Listener for Dottir
This audiobook is for CrossFit fans who want unfiltered access to Davidsdottir and Thorisdottir's perspective on their careers and friendship. It works particularly well as a short listen for people already familiar with their athletic histories, since the runtime assumes context rather than building it. Listeners coming to both athletes cold will still find the conversational warmth appealing, but will benefit from some prior familiarity with the CrossFit Games format to appreciate the specific career references. Those who need a full biographical arc with extended narrative development will want to supplement with longer-form sources. For the audience this audiobook is aimed at, the hour is well spent and leaves you wanting more, which is arguably the best outcome for a short-form sports memoir. CrossFit has produced few documents of competitive athletic friendship this candid, and that scarcity makes this one worth the time.
- Narration: Katrin Davidsdottir reads her own story, and the warmth and directness of her voice match exactly what fans of her athletic career would expect: earnest, unpolished in the best sense, and completely credible.
- Themes: Female athletic friendship, competitive identity, life beyond the podium
- Mood: Conversational and warm, with the energy of two athletes talking honestly rather than performing
- Verdict: At just over an hour, this audiobook delivers a concentrated dose of the Davidsdottir-Thorisdottir dynamic for CrossFit fans and anyone drawn to elite athletic friendship.
Is this audiobook accessible to people who do not follow CrossFit?
It is listenable without prior CrossFit knowledge, but the material rewards familiarity. The two athletes discuss their careers in terms that assume some baseline awareness of the Games format and their competitive histories.
Is there training and competition detail in this audiobook, or is it more personal and reflective?
Both. Career highlights and training rhythms are discussed, but the audiobook's real emphasis is on the friendship between the two athletes and what competitive life looks like from the inside, including the emotional dimensions that competition footage does not capture.
