The co-founder of HYROX has apologised after an athlete who suffered a bout of sudden faecal incontinence while competing was allowed to continue at an event in Beijing.
Moritz Fürste apologised to all involved.
Australian athlete Joanna Wietrzyk experienced the medical episode during the competition that she went on to win in Beijing at the weekend.
The incident went viral on Chinese social media, with videos of her competing while visibly soiled shared widely.
HYROX sees competitors combine running with multiple workout station challenges, including sandbag lunges, burpees, sled pushes and rowing using shared equipment.
Blast the race director, Chris Hersh posted on an HYROX community Facebook page.
HYROX co-founder Moritz Fürste took to Instagram to apologise "to all who were directly or indirectly involved".
HYROX China said the competition area was cleaned after the competition finished and relevant equipment was removed.
Wietrzyk, an HYROX athlete, was invited to compete at the Beijing event.
Chinese netizens have described HYROX as "paying to do farm work", with an individual entry fee of 799 yuan (about $170), on top of the cost of training and equipment.
HYROX held its first event in mainland China in November 2024, attracting fewer than 1,700 contestants.
By 2025, average registrations had surged to 5,079 per event — more than three times the previous year's figure, according to Grace Yu, research director at Daxue Consulting.
By April 2026, the #hyrox hashtag on Xiaohongshu, known as RedNote outside China, had surpassed 130 million views and generated more than 780,000 discussions.