What happened last Friday at Hyrox Beijing has almost the whole internet talking.
At least 20 people (no joke, it’s why I’m writing my longer thoughts here) have asked me what I think of what happened. I’m not necessarily the Hyrox expert, nor do I know much about public relations fiascoes.
But as someone who’s raced more than most people in my circles and who aspires to wring the towel dry with my fitness in this sport, everyone wanted my take as an aspiring elite athlete and coach.
This newsletter probably won’t follow the same format as most of my typical posts, so if I jump around from topic to topic, it’s because I’m just following my stream of consciousness from the past five days.
Who is Joanna Wietrzyk?
One of the most talented athletes the sport has seen in its short eight-year history. Full stop.
With 34 races to her name and more first-place flags than many Elite Hyrox athletes can boast (in two years, at that!), she has been a favorite at the last two world championship competitions (2nd place in both 2025 and 2026). She is almost always the fittest woman on the course any time she races.
She’s also the focal point of Hyrox Beijing after continuing her race despite experiencing severe incontinence about halfway through last week’s race.
It was a biohazard that has caused Hyrox to both change the rules and issue refunds to affected racers, as was recently reported by Matt B. Davis of Hybrid Fitness Media.
If you haven’t seen her before reading the flurry of articles that have come out in the days since Beijing, it could be easy to assume this was an act of hard-headed competitiveness.
“She should have just STOPPED!”
“How could she have not known?”
“So inconsiderate of other racers!”
While there is an indefensible case for it, one has to first understand the nature of an athlete. One who is so passionate about their sport that literally nothing will stop them.
Not even…what happened last Friday.
Those who are complaining about her disregard for the course in that moment need to step back and realize that some athletes, unless they are physically incapable because of injury, actual disqualification, or (God forbid) death, will not stop competing no matter what happens.
So, as an athlete, a small part of me understands why she didn't stop. That doesn’t mean I condone it, though.
For more context, the reigning Hyrox Women’s World Champion, Alyssa McElheny, was behind her (unfortunately) for most of this race. McElheny, to her credit, finished second, less than a minute behind her.
For Wietrzyk, a fierce competitor looking to make a statement after McElheny, an Olympic-level marathoner with less than a year of Hyrox experience (yes, you read that correctly), stunned everyone in Stockholm this year and won the championship, few things made more sense than continuing in the race despite her bowels.
Hyrox is largely at an inflection point where we’re seeing career runners make the transition into the sport, and in McElheny's and Men’s Elite athlete Luke Greer’s cases, doing exceptionally well.
I feel Joanna felt an obligation to represent the true-blue Hyroxers who have diverse fitness backgrounds and not let the “runners” take over the sport in that moment. She has yet to release anything other than a selfie from the hospital last weekend, captioned “a win is a win,” which sparked some of the outrage.
But I speculate that competitive spirit likely overtook her in that moment, and it’s unfair to her, a tremendous athlete and person, to attack her character for what happened last week.
What Went Wrong
Short of praising her athletic prowess, I won’t defend what she did in finishing that race.
There is something to be said for the hundreds of competitors who had to race after her and their health and safety. But…
Why did it happen? HOW?
There are many ways that someone can lose control of their bowels, but it’s not uncommon in the endurance world. I’ll try to shed some light on what could have happened at a biological level.
First - Endurance sports (namely running) are pretty well-documented as having the proclivity to cause gastrointestinal distress. Many runners and racers are encouraged to prevent muscle cramps by supplementing carbohydrates, electrolytes, and minerals during their races, which come in the form of synthetic gels made of maltodextrin, fructose, sodium bicarbonate, and other sugars for fast absorption. Because we’re used to carbs in solid form, these gels can upset some people's stomachs, intestines, and colons, and lead to what happened last Friday in some cases. Reddit’s r/running understands.
Second - This is not the first time this has happened in racing. It seems to have happened a non-zero number of times during the Boston Marathon — Paula Radcliffe, the 2005 Women’s winner, suffered similar incontinence. More hilariously, TikTok influencer Davis Clarke went viral two years ago for the same problem. Important: the loss of bowel function is a sign that the body is shutting down, which isn’t unusual for a high-stress event where heart rates skyrocket, muscles are strained to their maximums, and vital organs are thrown into chaotic fits that are non-homeostatic.
Third - That last point about bodies shutting down is an important one, but apparently it’s either a) not common knowledge among Hyrox organizers or b) Hyrox organizers never expected a bodily-fluid biohazard like this to occur. Many are spending their mental bandwidth online dragging Wietrzyk for continuing the race, but the onus was also on race organizers to recognize the safety hazards in play for both Joanna AND the rest of the racers. Hyrox judges and officials are mostly volunteers, the likes of whom might not have been able to make sense of the event, but anyone with some decent knowledge of health should have seen the incontinence and known it was a sign Joanna should have gotten to the hospital much sooner.
So I don’t think it's fair to attack Joanna and Joanna only for what happened. It’s not fair to attack her at all, really, as this was very much an anomaly, but hey, that’s the internet for you.
Hyrox first responded by cleaning the race course and disinfecting the equipment for the following day, but by that point, the damage was already done, and countless people were probably exposed to a plethora of germs.
One thought I had: Joanna is an ELITE athlete.
Given that this had never happened before, I wonder what the protocol could have been had Joanna stopped, told race officials, “Hey, I have to 💩,” left the course, and came back to finish.
My feeling is that race officials probably wouldn’t allow this for a multitude of reasons, but if they had, I think she’s fast enough to have emptied her bowels, returned to the course (if the bathroom was close enough), and still placed in the top 3.
Where do we go from here?
One thing I think that needs to be understood is this.
Hyrox is not going to disappear from this.
If I were someone considering doing a Hyrox, I’d be looking forward to incredibly clean racing venues from here on out, especially after the change to their protocols.
There is certainly going to be some negative backlash that will linger, but everyone I have talked to (who thinks rationally) knows that this was an anomaly, disgusting as it may have been. These things do NOT happen often.
We mustn’t let the memes and social media get to us on this.
What I haven’t particularly enjoyed from the fallout of this is the outsiders of Hyrox, who already had issues with the brand using this event as another reason to say why Hyrox is bad.
What happened is NOT reflective of all Hyrox athletes.
Many stereotypes about people who participate in the sport — that we’re culty, overly driven, egotistical, and obsessive, not all of which are completely wrong — are being perpetuated after this incident.
There is a bitterness toward Hyrox that I feel is a combination of the sport having its however-many-minutes-of-fame (and stealing the spotlight from marathon runners/track athletes) and straight up missing the bandwagon.
Some would rather hang on the edges of the sport, teasing it and all who participate in it, than feel like a “follower” and join the party late.
Those people will be louder in the comments section of most posts and articles than they’ll ever be supporting their friends at a race, which is unfortunate.
They’ll be extending the fun they’re making from this as long as they can, continuing to gaslight people who are passionate about the sport (which I’m fairly certain is making the whole world fitter, btw?) by saying they’re “making Hyrox their whole personality.”
Last time I checked, it’s very admirable and cool to care deeply about something.
But it seems like there’s a movement to bash people who like to try hard at things and invest time into new activities.
I hope that once Hyrox moves on — though I believe they will quickly — from this, there will be a change in the attitude toward Hyrox, especially if it continues to grow.
One athlete’s mistake will not define the sport, and those people who came to criticize will find some other gossip to latch onto, Hyrox or not.
If you ask me about the sport and what it does, I’ll continue to give the same answer:
It is a way for people to challenge themselves, rediscover (or simply discover) their fitness in a way that’s not numbers on a scale or pounds on a bar. In the process, most people who race at least one will find a welcoming, healthy community, not an exclusive, holier-than-thou one.
But I’ll let you make that decision for yourself!