Inside Hyrox, the sport where people will soil themselves to win

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Go hard or go home, they say… a win is a win.” That was the defiant message posted on Instagram by Hyrox record holder Joanna Wietrzyk after her latest victory at a competition in Beijing over the weekend. It sounds like a typical soundbite from an athlete emerging from a difficult race or match – one that might not have gone to plan, exactly, but ended happily all the same. But the story surrounding Wietrzyk’s performance is, well, a lot messier than that.

After becoming unwell during the fitness race, in which competitors alternate running with functional exercises such as rowing, sled pushes and burpees, 24-year-old Wietrzyk, who hails from Melbourne, Australia, ended up soiling herself – but pushed through regardless. Footage and pictures from the event appeared to show her using communal equipment and mats with faeces running down her legs.

It is, of course, not unheard of for athletes to have an accident during a sporting event. Paula Radcliffe memorably had to relieve herself by the side of the road during the 2005 London Marathon, and Gary Lineker still managed to ascend to national treasure status despite soiling himself during an Italia 1990 World Cup match. But those incidents didn’t take place in a confined indoor space, with other competitors then apparently having to use the same equipment afterwards.

Quite frankly, it has created a bit of a s***storm for the wildly popular competition, whose name is an intriguing portmanteau of “hybrid” (reflecting the different disciplines that participants need to master) and “rockstar”.

Wietrzyk deleted her Instagram post, and the event’s co-founder Moritz Furste apologised for allowing the race to continue after the incident. “Hyrox made a mistake by not immediately reacting during the race,” he wrote in a social media statement. “In the end it is my job to foresee these potential incidents – and I did not.”

Furste, a former field hockey Olympic champion, added that the company had made “rulebook changes immediately”, with “new rules and procedures in place to prevent situations like this from happening again”. The competition previously penalised behaviour such as spitting, littering and nostril clearing, but apparently had no official procedure around bodily fluids and faeces.

The reaction to this incident seems to have fallen into two camps. There are those who are outraged by the seeming disregard for the health of Wietrzyk’s fellow competitors, who had to deal with some truly grim race conditions so that the champion could secure her win. And then there are those who have hailed her as heroic for securing a victory despite clearly being unwell.

Indeed, in another statement shared by Hyrox, the brand noted that they “ask our athletes to push themselves to the highest levels”, and that “at times, they will go beyond what even we thought was possible”; the same post praised participants’ “courage, resilience and refusal to give in”.

It all begs the question: are Hyrox, and the countless other high-intensity fitness challenges populating our social media feeds, fostering a philosophy of exercise where more is more, where pushing yourself to the absolute extreme is normalised? And is this really healthy?

It’s not the only time that the event has generated viral notoriety – last year, footage from a race in Australia showed a man apparently leaving his partner to be tended to by medics after she had passed out, while he carried on running. Again, it sparked a debate about whether such a blinkered dedication to getting a personal best was something to be lauded, or a cause for concern.

South African fitness coach Leroy Saunders died after collapsing and losing consciousness while competing at the HyroxBangkok 2026 event. Saunders, 41, was competing at the event at the Queen Sirikit National Convention Centre in Bangkok on 13 August when he collapsed.

Event staff and medical personnel administered CPR and emergency resuscitation before he was taken to hospital, where he later died, according to The Nation.

Hyrox was launched in Hamburg, Germany, in 2018, the brainchild of Furste and Christian Toetzke, who wanted to come up with a concept that could hook gym-goers and runners alike. Just a few hundred people took part in the first event, but its popularity has since snowballed.

There are competitions in over 85 cities and 30 countries, and the sport is on track to reach 1.5 million participants this year. The co-founders expect it to generate $270m (£200m) this year; earlier this month, a consortium led by the private equity firm L Catterton, which is backed by the luxury conglomerate LVMH, bought a controlling stake in the company.

Part of the reason for its popularity is its simplicity. “Every race follows the same structure, so participants know exactly what they are preparing for and can easily compare their results over time or compare performances with other competitors,” explains Joshua Davidson, lecturer in clinical exercise science at the University of Derby.

The inclusion of doubles and relay categories, he adds, means that training can be a sociable experience – but most importantly, Hyrox has “successfully leveraged the immense power of social media to drive engagement”, connecting with an audience “for whom fitness is not simply exercise, but part of their lifestyle and identity”. In our digital-focused world, “the ability to document and share an achievement adds another layer of motivation and status”, Davidson adds.

And so events like Hyrox become not only physical tests, but social signals. Sporting achievements act as badges of discipline and resilience, and membership of a community is associated with having those qualities.

We’re currently in an era in which many of us live very sedentary lifestyles; in 2024, one study found that around three-quarters of Brits are not hitting the NHS guidelines of 150 minutes of exercise per week. Hybrid fitness is certainly “encouraging lots of people to get active and to get active in different ways”, says fitness expert and Strong Like Mum founder Shakira Akabusi, thanks to its focus on different disciplines.

Something that has motivated “many people to train with greater purpose and consistency”, as Tom Williams, head of performance and strength and conditioning coach at Pure Sports Medicine, puts it, is certainly not to be sniffed at. Hyrox also gives participants “a meaningful target that keeps them engaged”, he notes, so that they won’t just view exercise “as something they ‘should’ do”.

The danger is that some individuals begin to see warning signs such as excessive fatigue, illness, injury or poor recovery as obstacles to ignore

Tom Williams, head of performance, Pure Sports Medicine

Although Hyrox is a fairly new phenomenon, intense fitness challenges aren’t. Marathons, triathlons and endurance cycling events have always been very popular, says Dr Hugh Coyne, a private GP and co-founder of Coyne Medical. But what has changed significantly, he notes, is “that people’s performance expectations have increased. When I was growing up, just completing a marathon seemed extraordinary. In my early career as a doctor, doing a four-hour marathon seemed extraordinary. Now people are frequently targeting three-hour marathons.”

Hyrox and its various imitators have arrived at a point when it has never been easier for us to brag about our sporting achievements online (surely we all know a Strava bore who is obsessed with optimising every metric on their “casual” 5k – if you don’t, that bore is probably… you).

It’s creating a culture where it can seem like everyone is smashing out PBs on their lunch break, competing in half-marathons every weekend, then doing a Hyrox for a bit of light relief. And if you’re not constantly pushing yourself to the absolute limit, it can feel like you’re not doing enough.

Social media, Williams says, “often showcases exceptional performances, extreme suffering, and stories of people pushing through significant discomfort. While those stories can be inspiring, they can also blur the line between resilience and recklessness. The danger is that some individuals begin to see warning signs such as excessive fatigue, illness, injury or poor recovery as obstacles to ignore rather than signals to respect”.

There can be risks in “glorifying excess”, he adds. “Social media tends to show highly emotive snapshots of exertion and suffering while leaving out the months of progressive training, adequate nutrition, sleep and recovery that made the performance possible and sustainable.”

And so there’s a danger that “we are having people now enter the space who are skipping the foundational, important things that you need for longevity in sport”, Akabusi says, “and they are instantly going into high-level activity, when they haven’t necessarily put the foundations in place”.

The fitness industry, she notes, seems to “really value power, strength and speed, which is absolutely important, and it should be a goal for many people, but we don’t value stability and mobility enough alongside it. For longevity and health, it’s equally important to prioritise that along with strength and power”.

It’s when people attempt to shortcut their way to that attention-grabbing PB that issues start to arise. “From a clinical perspective, we’re seeing more people arrive with issues linked to training errors rather than the event itself,” Williams says, noting that the “most common mistake is trying to do too much too quickly”.

From a clinical perspective, we’re seeing more people arrive with issues linked to training errors rather than the event itself

Overuse injuries, particularly those impacting the Achilles tendon, the calf complex, knees and hips, are common, as are “lower back, shoulder and hamstring issues associated with high training volumes”, running injuries and “fatigue-related problems caused by insufficient recovery between sessions”. All of these, Williams stresses, are preventable, and are not down to some inherent danger in a Hyrox competition itself.

Instead of focusing on race-specific workouts and drills, it’s important to build up the skills and capabilities that underpin the exercises, Akabusi suggests. “You want to work on your aerobic capacity and your cardiovascular strength, to be able to keep that momentum up and to run under exhaustion – that first kilometre will feel very different to kilometres seven and eight. We also need to look at your recovery rate – how quickly your body can recover – as well as core strength, stability and grip strength.”

Resting in between your workouts and ensuring you have a consistent sleep schedule is important, too – so is training the pelvic floor (especially with last weekend’s scenario in mind…)

Davidson believes we would be better off encouraging a fitness culture that values “education, sensible preparation, consistency [and] recovery” just as much as it “celebrates visible effort”.

The “real achievement”, he adds, is not pushing yourself to the point of breakdown; it is preparing intelligently enough to take on a difficult challenge while remaining healthy enough to do it again”.