Hyrox on the precipice: The sport’s gain has become its pain | Canada Voices

Alex Cyr is a freelance writer, author and competitive distance runner.

The pictures make you wish, just this once, that they were AI-generated: Hyrox athlete Joanna Wietrzyk, lowering herself into a push-up at a race in Beijing on Sept. 12, exploding into a burpee, lunging and running as a river of feces flows down her coiled hamstrings and muscular calves.

Hyrox is intense, combining weight-training exercises with one-kilometre running intervals, and these races push athletes to extremes. But the images also reflected something undeniably human. Even though Ms. Wietrzyk soiled herself, she decided to push on, finishing and winning the popular event.

The real problem is that Hyrox officials stood idly by in the enclosed, repurposed speed-skating oval, unsure of what to do, before ultimately allowing Ms. Wietrzyk to continue sharing competition equipment with more than 100 other athletes. The incident led to a rare unanimous response from the internet at large: Nobody involved handled that well.

This wouldn’t be a big deal in the scheme of things if, like me, you’d always thought of Hyrox as a niche hobby or an extracurricular activity – something like pickup basketball, in which emptying one’s bowels on the court in pursuit of victory would still qualify as insane, but is more or less a stakes-free pursuit.

What is Hyrox and is the viral fitness trend right for you?

But Hyrox isn’t just a recreational sport any more. It may have started that way: The participants I’ve come to know over the years have, after all, been hobbyists – corporate folks who wanted to get back in shape, former varsity athletes with a competitive streak, that jacked cousin who’s been slightly adrift ever since CrossFit fell from grace.

Ms. Wietrzyk, however, is unlike any of those people. She is an elite athlete: a national-level tennis player and bodybuilding star from Australia who tried Hyrox in 2024, set the women’s solo professional world record soon after, then made the sport her livelihood. A win in Beijing would have netted her US$15,000, and continued good standing with her sponsors, which include Puma, The Feed and the watch company Amazfit.

In the past, rare standout athletes like her would have turned to other sports. In Canada, for instance, she would be a shoo-in for an Olympic development program like RBC Training Ground, and might have found her way onto our national bobsled team. But why do that in 2026 when one can find more career success in Hyrox? In fact, there is arguably more money to be made there than in Olympic bobsled, skeleton, weightlifting and even rugby, and a growing number of elite athletes across the world are discovering that.

In that context, Ms. Wietrzyk becomes a microcosm of Hyrox’s evolution – and the precipice on which it stands. Only recently has it become big enough to attract many athletes of her calibre. What will the sport do, and how might it change, now that they’ve arrived?

Is your child considering specializing in a sport? Read this first

Founded in 2017, Hyrox’s first event drew just 650 competitors and offered little more than a finisher’s medal and a high-five. Today, more than 1.5 million people across 30 countries have competed in a Hyrox race. The brand has more than 5,000 affiliated gyms worldwide, and a recent valuation for a sale of its majority stake pegged Hyrox to be worth around US$700-million. In Toronto, the annual race has expanded from two days to four since its debut in 2024 to accommodate an explosion of participants.

I’m not convinced that Hyrox is ready for this boom. They clearly were not prepared for poopgate, after all. Their inaction endangered participants and forced them into damage-control mode: apologizing to the public, refunding athletes and updating their policies. But can we blame them for not seeing this incident coming? Were they not the flat-footed victims of an occurrence with no precedent?

Ms. Wietrzyk has become an unfortunate avatar of the underbelly of elite sport: the small part that’s not so pleasant to look at, but is a fact of life, and which responsible governing bodies must be prepared to handle. People push themselves harder, and behave differently, when real money is on the line. Is Hyrox ready for its first gambling scandal, for instance? Or for more social media controversies? What about its first doping case? Their policies state that they have the right to test their athletes following World Anti-Doping Agency protocols, but it’s still unclear how rigorously they actually test. If (or when) any of this stuff happens, who makes the decision on how to handle it?

The growing pains of professionalization can cause a sport to collapse, and history is littered with examples. Take CrossFit, for example: The darling breakout exercise regimen of the 2010s was on a relentless upward trajectory until the product grew too quickly, became watered down, and eventually crumbled under its own weight. Coaching certifications became too easy to come by – leading to minimally qualified trainers supervising gyms – and an emphasis on ever greater weights contributed to enough injuries that #CrossFitFails began trending online. All the while, as the product disintegrated, membership fees skyrocketed, and a few PR issues in the boardroom and in its corporate culture cemented its free fall.

P90X was an infomercial workout sensation in the mid-aughts. How does it hold up today?

Then, there is trail running. The hippie’s anti-establishment alternative to road running has become overrun with branding, expensive gear and costly entry fees in recent years. That’s not purely a bad thing; it’s a sign that the sport is attracting more talent, which pulls more brand attention. Still, it means that the sport is dealing with increased doping, and competing governing bodies have struggled to agree on how to deal with it. Its identity is also changing, with recreational participants feeling increasingly priced out.

These are the downsides of trying to capture the zeitgeist. Trail running and CrossFit got caught up in these problems because, at least at one point, people liked the product. But by appealing to our collective craving for fitness, metrics, community and, yes, online vanity, Hyrox has a chance to meet this moment better than both. That makes their rush to professionalization all the more important. The rulebook needs to grow just as fast as public interest.

If that happens, this recent incident will be seen as a growing pain and nothing more. Because after hosing itself off, Hyrox remains sticky, at least figuratively. And if they play their cards right, they won’t be going anywhere.