Hyrox athletes refunded after competitor soiled herself

NEW YORK – Joanna Wietrzyk was about halfway to winning a Hyrox, the international fitness competition, in China over the weekend when she experienced something unpleasant but not that uncommon for high-endurance athletes: She soiled herself.

But this was an indoor event with shared equipment stations, so there were concerns competitors might get sick.

Wietrzyk, an elite Hyrox athlete from Australia, had visible faeces running down her legs as she did burpee broad jumps and weighted lunges at the National Speed Skating Oval in Beijing, alongside more than 100 fellow competitors – many of whom would need to pass through the same stations and use the same weights.

Videos of the incident at Hyrox, the hugely popular events that combine running with exercise stations, ricocheted online and caused an uproar.

In reaction posts across social media, Hyrox athletes and people in the broader fitness community and beyond criticised the event organisers and the athlete, asking why she was not pulled out of the competition.

Now, Hyrox is refunding some competitors of the event after apologising and updating its rules and procedures.

In an e-mail sent to Beijing competitors on Sept 16 and reviewed by The New York Times, Hyrox said it would provide refunds for the value of the event ticket for athletes who competed at certain times on the same day as Wietrzyk.

The e-mail also said that after the event the “on-site team completed the sanitisation procedures and full turf replacement” and that Hyrox had updated its “emergency‑response protocol for biological‑contamination incidents”.

The company did not respond to requests for comment, and it was not clear how many people were refunded or for how much. Entrance fees were just over US$100 (S$128) for most athletes.

“It’s the least they could do,” Joe Ho, an athlete who competed in the Beijing Hyrox, said on Sept 16 of the refunds.

In an earlier phone conversation, he described the high costs of a Hyrox, including flights, hotels, training and time away from work.

“We’re paying the money to be in a safe environment,” Ho said during that conversation. “We’re already paying money to suffer. We’re not going to Hyrox and then going, ‘That was great.’ To add additional contamination to that suffering is not something that we are paying for.”

He also described watching Wietrzyk compete from the stands.

“Everyone could physically see that there was faeces on her leg, but no one said anything,” he said in a phone interview from Taipei, describing watching the lunges as part of the event. “It was just, like, business as normal.”

He added, “People were behind her and next to her, and no one warned people to step aside.”

He added that he did not want the athlete to be “bullied” or “humiliated”, but criticised the Hyrox organisers.

Before the refund announcement, Hyrox had issued an apology on social media on Sept 14.

Hyrox “made a mistake by not reacting immediately during the race”, wrote Moritz Furste, one of the sport’s founders. Furste added that Hyrox would be reviewing competition processes as a result of the outcry.

Neither Wietrzyk nor Hyrox responded to requests for comment.

The popularity of Hyrox, which was founded in 2017 in Hamburg, Germany, has skyrocketed in recent years.

More than 1.5 million people in 30 countries have competed in at least one Hyrox race and versions of the part-running, part-strength exercise workouts are available in affiliated gyms for those looking to try their hand in a lower-pressure environment.

Competitions involve shared equipment, like rowing machines and weighted sleds, and contestants are in close quarters. There are often strict rules: no spitting, no pouring water over one’s head.

That rise has also coincided with the fact that social media has become omnipresent, and Ryan Gibney, a coach in Liverpool, England, who works with elite Hyrox athletes, said that might have played a role in the global reaction to incident on Sept 12.

“Something that happens at a race can be filmed, clipped and distributed around the world within seconds,” Gibney said in an e-mail.

“Social media also strips away a lot of context. People are watching a short piece of footage and judging an athlete’s decision without necessarily understanding what that athlete is experiencing physically and psychologically in that moment.”

Taiyyibah Moughal, a sports dietitian who lives in Bay Shore, New York, said it was not all that rare for people to suddenly empty their bowels during intense sports, like distance running. The timed nature of Hyrox, compared with other events like CrossFit, means participants might be wary of wasting precious seconds.

“What bothered me was that they continued with the Hyrox, and it was an indoor event,” Moughal, 45, said. “If it was an outdoor event, that’s completely different, but when you’re sharing machines, that is where I felt like they should have taken the situation in their hands and stopped it.”

Rich Ryan, an elite Hyrox athlete who lives in the US city of Denver, said he had empathy for the “athlete tunnel vision” Wietrzyk might have been experiencing.

“She’s an elite athlete in this race – there are different stakes than somebody racing for fun,” he said, describing how dropping out of a race could affect an athlete’s livelihood and standing for future competitions.

Brian Spin, who runs the endurance sport blog Barbell Spin, also said he felt the athlete should have been removed immediately by organisers.

“In that moment, they didn’t take action, and may not have understood the gravity of what was to come,” said Spin, who lives in Nashville, Tennessee.

“Once an athlete is competing, the event has medical personnel, judges and race officials whose responsibility is to safeguard the competition and its athletes,” Gibney, the Hyrox coach, said.

“I don’t think it should be left to the athlete to decide whether they continue,” he added.

As Hyrox tries to pacify the online masses, Rob Perez, a fitness content creator in Washington, who has completed nine Hyrox competitions, wondered if the recent events might deter people from future participation.

“Whether they’re a new Hyrox athlete or looking to try their first Hyrox, a lot them are turned off, I think,” Perez said, adding that the videos shared online had “been a huge turnoff to a lot of people”.

Wietrzyk, for her part, has not spoken out since winning the competition.

In a social media post after the race, which is no longer visible, she shared a photo of herself in what appeared to be a hospital bed with the caption “go hard or go home they say... a win is a win”.

She has since turned off all comments on her social media accounts. NYTIMES