She has unfinished business.
Joanna Wietrzyk, a 24-year-old Hyrox competitor from Australia, announced she would return to fitness competition on Friday after getting soiled in a previous event and continuing to run.
The incident in Beijing in September sparked a heated online debate over whether Wietrzyk was a hero for overcoming fecal incontinence to finish in first place – or a villain for making everyone deal with her excrement.
On Wednesday, she shared that she had taken the last two months to reflect on what happened and was excited to return to racing in Hamburg, Germany, on Friday.
“I’m back on the running track and I’m very excited to get back to doing what I love,” she said on Instagram. “I hope we see you all there.”
“It was a very difficult situation to deal with”
Wietrzyk said she has taken the weeks since the Sept. 12 race in Beijing to reflect.
“First of all, I just want to say that I am really, really sorry to everyone that I have touched, whether they were spectators or participants on the race stage, for my decision to choose to continue racing,” she said.
“By having this time to reflect, I really learned a lot from the situation,” she added. “It was a very difficult situation for me to deal with and also very conflicting.”
She praised the outpouring of support she received and revealed she was in Hamburg for the competition which begins on Friday.
Wietrzyk will compete in the Elite 15, a series of competitions to qualify for the Hyrox World Championships. It is a “closed, invitation-only series designed for the world’s best athletes,” the company said.
The top-ranked athletes compete in Elite 15 races to earn a top-three spot, earning them a qualifying spot for the world championship.
What happened in Beijing?
Wietrzyk reportedly had food poisoning before his fateful September competition.
She had completed two runs and the SkiErg (a machine that simulates cross-country skiing) without incident when she arrived at the fourth exercise station: burpee broad jumps. That’s when she suddenly had explosive diarrhea.
Photos and videos taken throughout the race show fecal matter running down her legs as she completed another run, a seated row, a farmer’s carry, a sandbag lunge and wall ball exercises.
Chinese authorities said staff quickly cordoned off the affected areas, disinfected the site until the end of the day, removed contaminated equipment and made arrangements to replace the carpet once the event ended, according to the South China Morning Post.
But many participants and spectators say that was not enough: they saw feces spread on the equipment and on the track, causing several athletes to fall.
“HYROX has clear medical procedures and biocontaminants in place. In this case, an unforeseen situation occurred in which protocols designed for elite competition and mass participation became unclear, creating ambiguity in how they were applied and understood,” the company said after the incident.
Hyrox co-founder Moritz Fuerste later commented on the stink, admitting that the organizers “made a mistake by not reacting immediately during the race.”
He added that the company has made “immediate rule changes,” with “new rules and procedures in place to prevent situations like this from happening again.”
Meanwhile, Wietrzyk apologized in a statement and said she would “retroactively withdraw” from the race and lose the points she had earned.
Gn sports
