We Noticed: HYROX Diarrhea Disaster, T100 French Riviera Preview and More
The global uproar over the HYROX athlete, Joanna Wietrzyk, hasn’t abated since the Australian won an event in Beijing last week while diarrhea was running down her legs. Initially Wietrzyk posted on Instagram “Go hard or go home … a win is a win,” after the event, but would later delete the post. Yesterday she apologized for continuing with the event, and has withdrawn her name from the results.
“I want to offer my sincere apology to the people of China, my fellow competitors, the spectators and the HYROX organizers for what happened during the race in Beijing,” Wietrzyk wrote. “Looking back, I regret the decision to not have stepped off the track I recognize that I should have made a different choice.”
While triathletes and marathon runners might have seen similar situations in events before, the graphic images from last week’s HYROX competition in Beijing have gone viral. Wietrzyk continued to compete using equipment other competitors would compete on, including ropes, rowing machines and medicine balls, while also competing on a shared indoor track. Athletes have described having to use the same faces-covered equipment, while there’s also been reports of athletes slipping on faces on the track. HYROX China announced on Wednesday that it was offering refunds to at least 1,000 affected athletes. The intense backlash also prompted HYROX officials to update the global rule book, which had already listed penalties for spitting or clearing nostrils, to ensure that similar situations didn’t happen again.
Numerous outlets have reported that Wietrzyk’s sponsor, Puma, has removed any references to her apparel on its site, which appears to be the case today – the link to “Joanna Wietrzyk x PUMA | HYROX Performance Gear” goes to a general PUMA x HYROX landing page.
Wietrzyk was one of the biggest names in HYROX racing, having won all four Elite 15 Major titles this year and setting the HYROX Women’s Solo Pro world record (54:25) in Warsaw in April.
Wilde Leads the Way to T100 French Riviera
Fresh off his IRONMAN 70.3 World Championship last weekend, Hayden Wilde will arrive as the favourite for tomorrow’s EKOÏ French Riviera T100. Things will get started at Base Nature Place in Saint-Raphaël and Fréjus, roughly 30 minutes up the coast from Nice. The race tomorrow is men’s only, following the women’s race in Vancouver last month. Wilde currently leads the T100 tour and is the defending champion.
“I want to try and get some early points on the board and then I can go to the race in Saudi and try and switch that third place [from the T100 San Francisco Triathlon] into a first place as well,” Wilde said earlier this week. “So there’s many things that could reap the rewards after this race. I want to come back here and try and get that top step again. I think I just have to play my cards right and just be patient again.”
Last year just 22 seconds separated Wilde from runner-up Jelle Geens, who finished third in Nice. This will be Geens’ first T100 race after recovering from an injury for much of the year. Others to keep an eye on include Rico Bogen (the San Francisco winner), his countryman Lasse Nygaard Priester, American Morgan Pearson and Jake Birtwhistle, who currently sits second in the T100 standings.
Here’s the full list of competitors in tomorrow’s race:
| Name | Country |
|---|---|
| Hayden Wilde | New Zealand |
| Jake Birtwhistle | Australia |
| Rico Bogen | Germany |
| Lasse Nygaard Priester | Germany |
| Samuel Dickinson | Great Britain |
| Kurt McDonald | Australia |
| Gregor Payet | Luxembourg |
| Morgan Pearson | USA |
| Menno Koolhaas | Netherlands |
| Jelle Geens | Belgium |
| Youri Keulen | Netherlands |
| Henry Räppo | Estonia |
| Will Draper | Great Britain |
| Fabian Kraft | Germany |
| Wilhelm Hirsch | Germany |
| Guillem Montiel | Spain |
| Antonio Benito López | Spain |
| Jannik Schaufler | Germany |
| Kyle Smith | New Zealand |
| Valdemar Solok | Denmark |
The race coverage starts at 8 am local time (2 am EST). You can watch the show life on the PTO’s YouTube page for viewers outside Europe, or on TriathlonLive.io.
News We Missed While We Were Busy in Nice
- Dorian Coninx (FRA) and Georgia Taylor-Brown (GBR) won last weekend’s World Triathlon Championship Series race in Karlovy Vary. Coninx finished 10 seconds up on Alex Yee (GBR), while Taylor-Brown hit the finish line 36-seconds up on Taylor Spivey (USA), with reigning world champion Lisa Tertsch (GER) almost 90 seconds behind the Brit. You can see full results here.
- Sam Laidlow (FRA) won Challenge Samarkand despite walking for a bit on the run crossing the line in 3:34:57 ahead of Emil Holm (DEN) and Will Draper (GBR). Australia’s Natalie Van Coevorden took the women’s title in 3:58:41 ahead of Daisy Davies (GBR) and Sara Pérez Sala (ESP).
- Dutch athletes Milan Brons (7:37:00) and Kyra Meulenberg (8:42:07) won Challenge Almere last weekend. Results can be found here.
- Nikki Bartlett (GBR) won IRONMAN Wales for the second time last weekend, overcoming the challenging conditions (described as torrential rain – in other words, a normal Sunday in Tenby) to finish in 9:45:37 with Diede Diederiks taking second in 10:07:15 and Lea Riccoboni (FRA) rounding out the podium. Henrik Goesch (FIN) took the men’s race in 8:31:31, ahead of Germany’s Michiel Stockman (8:33:49) and Mitch Wiseman’s (NED), who rounded out the podium in 8:43:43.
- Hannah Berry (NZL) won IRONMAN 70.3 Sunshine Coast in 4:05:33 ahead of Aussies Emily Watts and Charlotte McShane. Trent Thorpe (3:42:33) added another Kiwi win to the day’s racing ahead of Aussies Caleb Noble and Mitchell Kibby.
Knokke-Heist to Host Full-Distance IRONMAN
After three years of hosting a 70.3 race, the first full-distance IRONMAN race in Belgium will take place in Knokke-Heist next year. According to IRONMAN, Belgium is the fourth-biggest nation by participation in Europe this year.
The new race will take place on September 5, 2027.
Double sphincter failure - considerations
Btw/on a point of order, that wasn’t “diarrhoea” running down her legs.
Just as a point, Jo has never had a “Puma clothing line”, that link lead to a page where it listed some of her favourite bits of Puma clothing. But it’s not like Puma has pulled something that she designed
!!!
Holy Mother of DOG! I kept seeing snippets of this here and there on the socials. As a former road bike racer in the 90s, a marathon runner and later an Ironman triathlete, I figured I’ve seen it all in regards to this topic. So I never read the details and didn’t understand the uproar. But OMG, when you are getting your feces all over equipment others will use???!!! And endangering other runners on a track because you’re dripping feces??!! This has to be the worst thing I have ever read regarding having bowel problems during a race. While I feel sorry, she had to be sick during a big race, she should have stopped racing. I also feel badly for the athletes who had to use the equipment.
I remember doing Chattanooga IM 70.3 worlds in 2017 and there were literally pee puddles on the chairs in transition. Women who couldn’t be bothered to use a port o pot or at least pee somewhere on the ground out of the way. I thought that was rock bottom behavior. But this takes us to a new depth.
The two most famous accidents of my lifetime, were of course the Julie Moss crawl in the 82 Ironman, and one of the 9 New York marathon wins of Grete Waitz back in the 80’s too. I remember watching the live coverage, and the announcer was commenting that she must have a hamstring cramp, as she keeps reaching back there. I’m screaming at the tv, she is craping her pants and pulling her shorts to the side to let it out!!! Not until later did they figure out what was going on, completely clueless. Then it was all look at the lengths these world class runners will go to, not stopping for anything…
Both outside of course, nothing like this indoor machine to machine transfers..
Bodily problems can happen during any race but when it affects other racers, then that’s where you draw the line.
Title of this thread cracks me up!!!
“We Noticed: HYROX Diarrhea Disaster …”
Um, EVERYBODY noticed, dude! Not just “we”
It seems like almost every month, lately, something is blowing up!!!
NIKE’s “Walkers Tolerated”
The Circle Pit
UTMB vs Influencers
Now this shit
I can’t help but wonder ‘what’s on tap for October?’
Not necessarily a “line” nor drawn
More like a Jackson Pollock
“Autumn Rhythm, (Number 30)”
As much as I loathe that orange you-know-who…..at least he wears diapers for his incontinence issues.
Maybe Joanna needs her own Natalie?
While I understand the uproar, I kinda understand bad decision making when exhausted and going for the win.
However, the organisers and/or officials seem to me just as much to blame, if not more. I don’t want to go looking for pictures, but if it was so bad she was leaving diarhea all over the place, and leading the race, surely there are eyeballs on her, and race officials need to get her off the course. Especially if there are rules against spit and blowing noses…
Thanks for that clarification @tomoffat. I kept looking for any sort of reference to Puma stuff from her, and couldn’t see anything on her own Instagram. Your note explains a lot.
I went to find the photos to really see what all the fuss was about. They are very graphic and again, I’ve seen all kinds of gross stuff in races over the decades. I have a strong stomach for this stuff so had to check it out. She was very sick and I had wondered if it was from that diarrhea lettuce thing but I believe that is now subsided. Further investigation, Hyrox has rules for spitting but not for defecating and leaving it on equipment and the track. I am quite sure they will be creating some new rules around this.
Yeah, that was mentioned in the Slowtwitch article. But everything cannot be in the rule book. If someone’s bleeding, shitting, vomiting, or peeing all over the place, are you not gonna stop them because it’s not in the rule book ? Putting explicitely in the rule book that you’re not allowed to shit or pee on equipments, is that really necessary ? If so we should be coherent, say she didn’t break any rules and stop being outraged by her conduct, as she merely followed the rules. And what is gonna be the next incredibly wild thing someone does that wasn’t explicitely in the rule book because no one thought someone would actually do such a thing ?…
10.4 Littering is prohibited. For example, all paper cups and used gel packaging must be discarded in the bins provided, not on the Roxzone floor or run course. Each
infringement can result in a 2-minute time penalty. Spitting or clearing of nostrils onto the floor is strictly prohibited. Each infringement will result in a 2-minute time penalty.
Amdt: “10.4 Littering . . . Egress of bodily fluids eg spitting or clearing of nostrils onto the floor or equipment is strictly prohibited. Each infringement will result in a 2-minute time penalty or DQ: Race Director decision.” Also needs amendment in summary at p45.
Also note that “rapid cooling” is prohibited!
“To avoid creating slip hazards for other racers and staff, the fluids provided at aid stations are for drinking only. They are not to be used for active cooling [e.g. pouring water over the head or body]. Doing so will incur a 2-minute penalty per infringement.”
They were not anticipating a competitor to have bowel distress like that. It was so severe from the photos. That kind of incident is really not that uncommon in endurance racing - long bike races, marathons, ultra runs, long distance triathlons. Even if not all of us have soiled our shorts in a long race, I’m willing to bet we have all felt those awful rumblings and/or had races where we had way more porto-potty stops than ever anticipated.