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Australian athlete Joanna Wietrzyk told the BBC she bears full responsibility for continuing to race after soiling herself during a Hyrox competition in Beijing last month. “It was my decision to continue racing so I take full responsibility for that,” Wietrzyk said in the interview published October 29. She added that she had not considered those around her at the time, describing the choice in hindsight as wrong and offering sincere apologies to everyone affected. The 24-year-old called the experience and ensuing backlash traumatic, revealing she even considered leaving the sport before deciding to return to competition.
The incident took place on September 12 at the National Speed Skating Oval, where Wietrzyk led her elite women’s category until diarrhoea struck roughly halfway through the event. She proceeded with visible faecal matter on her body across remaining stations including runs, sled pushes and wall balls, leading to widespread sharing of images online. Fellow participants in later heats raised hygiene concerns after using the same indoor equipment, prompting criticism of both the athlete and organisers for failing to intervene promptly. Wietrzyk later forfeited her victory and withdrew from the official results.
Hyrox co-founder Moritz Fürste apologised for the handling of the situation and acknowledged that protocols had not been applied as they should have been. The organisation subsequently introduced rules empowering race directors to remove competitors if blood, vomit, urine or faeces create contamination risks or endanger welfare. Affected participants from certain Beijing heats received full refunds, according to reports from Chinese media and the South China Morning Post. Fürste committed to refining event processes to avoid any recurrence in a sport conducted primarily indoors with shared apparatus.
The episode unfolded as Hyrox experiences extraordinary growth worldwide. A WWD analysis reported participation surging from 570,000 competitors in 2024 to 1.5 million in 2025, with more than 2.5 million projected for 2026 across the Americas, Europe, Asia-Pacific and Africa. London events have seen finisher numbers rise nearly fiftyfold since 2021, reaching over 21,000 at the most recent edition. Data compiled by HyroxDataLab from more than 12,000 results in one recent season placed the median finish time at 1:22:44, with running segments consistently forming about half the total effort.
A study published in Frontiers in Physiology examined results from the first seven seasons and found median performances improved by eight to 10 minutes between seasons four and seven, with even larger gains among slower competitors. Elite times showed increasing density, as the coefficient of variation dropped below 5 percent. These advances occurred alongside strength stations that produce more ranking variability than the running portions. Wietrzyk, a former world record holder, returns to action at this week’s Hamburg event opening the 2026-27 Elite Series.
Wietrzyk stated in the BBC interview that no race officials urged her to stop at the time, despite the clear visibility of her condition. She emphasised her initial fitness at the start of the Beijing race, where she had no warning of impending illness. The athlete’s reflections come after an initial social media defence that she later deleted amid intense online scrutiny. Hyrox maintains it had biocontaminant procedures in place, though the Beijing case exposed ambiguities in their application.
