A Hyrox Athlete Lost Control of Her Bowels in the Middle of a Race. Why Was She Allowed to Keep Going?

Hyrox co-founder Moritz Fürste has admitted the organization should have done something during its Beijing race on September 12 after Australian pro Joanna Wietrzyk suffered bowel incontinence and was allowed to continue on in the competition despite the very obvious sanitation risk.“Hyrox made a mistake by not reacting immediately during the race,” Fürste wrote in a statement following days of backlash over the incident.Wietrzyk ultimately won the women’s Pro race in 1:01:23, but by the finish, fecal matter was visibly covering much of her legs, shorts, socks, and shoes—and undoubtedly trailing behind her as she moved through the course.That’s an especially pronounced problem in Hyrox, where everyone keeps cycling through the same indoor course and workout areas. Eight 1-kilometer runs are broken up by stations including SkiErg, sled pushes and pulls, burpee broad jumps, rowing, farmers carries, sandbag lunges, and wall balls, and whatever’s left behind doesn’t exactly stay out of everyone else’s way.Wietrzyk’s response afterward didn’t do much to calm things down. In a since-deleted Instagram post, she wrote, “Go hard or go home … a win is a win. In all seriousness, thank you for all the support. I’ll be back soon x.”Much of the anger was aimed at race officials: Why was she allowed to keep going once the situation was obvious? What about the athletes coming through those stations behind her? And what were volunteers left cleaning up?“This isn’t about embarrassing or shaming someone for having an accident. Accidents happen,” one commenter wrote. They pointed instead to the health risk of continuing across dirty floors and using equipment shared by hundreds of other athletes.Hyrox’s first global statement tried to explain how nobody stepped in. The organization said it already had biocontaminant and medical protocols, but that the line between its elite-racing procedures and mass-participation rules became muddled in Beijing.That, Hyrox said, created “ambiguity in how they were applied and understood.” The organization also admitted that people had legitimate reasons to question how the race was handled and said it needed to examine its own response. It drew a much harder line, however, around the abuse directed at Wietrzyk herself.Her most recent Instagram grid post currently has comments turned off, but that hasn’t stopped people from moving to several of her older posts to make jokes, demand an apology, and, in some cases, say they’ll never compete in Hyrox again because of what she did.“There is no place in our community for threats of violence or encouragement to harm an athlete,” Hyrox wrote. It added that anyone identified making those threats through comments, direct messages, or social media will be permanently banned from its events.Fürste’s separate statement placed the responsibility more squarely on Hyrox leadership. He apologized to those affected and acknowledged that Hyrox should have been better prepared for a situation like this.“In the end it is my job to foresee these potential incidents—and I did not,” he wrote.Fürste said the organization started revisiting its event processes and rulebook immediately after Beijing, with new procedures now in place “to prevent situations like this from happening again.”Neither Fürste nor Hyrox has explained exactly what those new procedures require.Find Your Next Running PlaylistSean Abrams was the Senior Editor, Growth and Engagement at Men’s Health. He’s a former hip hop dancer who likes long walks on the beach and large glasses of tequila. You can find his previous work at Maxim, Elite Daily, and AskMen.