An Australian athlete has admitted putting others at risk by continuing to race after soiling herself during an endurance sports event. Speaking exclusively to the BBC ahead of her return to the sport, Joanna Wietrzyk suggested her determination to win the Hyrox race in Beijing in September had clouded her judgement: "It was my decision to continue racing so I take full responsibility for that." Challenged over why she carried on, she said: "I didn't really think about those around me… the decision that I made in hindsight was the wrong decision and I'm truly sorry for everyone that I did affect." The 24-year-old said that the experience and subsequent backlash was "traumatic". She also said she had considered walking away from the sport, in which she holds a world record.
Hyrox sees participants alternate between running a kilometre and doing fitness exercises, including a sled push, burpee jumps, indoor rowing, and lunges while carrying a sandbag. The competition has exploded in popularity since it was founded in 2017 in Hamburg, in northern Germany, and is now held across the world. Roughly halfway through her event last month, Wietrzyk suffered a bout of diarrhoea.
Images of faecal matter on parts of her body were then shared widely online. Asked whether officials should have stopped her, she said no-one encouraged her to do so the time. Hyrox's co-founder, Moritz Fürste, has issued an apology saying it had been a mistake not to react immediately during the race.
New rules have now been introduced giving race directors the power to remove athletes if their vomit, urine or faeces pose a risk of contamination or threaten the welfare of themselves or others in a race that is primarily held indoors using shared equipment. Although initially defiant in a now-deleted Instagram post, Wietrzyk apologised in the week after the Beijing event and said she would forfeit the win and retroactively withdraw from the race. Due to compete in Hamburg on Friday, she said she was "nervous" about her return and hoped that the high-profile incident would not define her.
"I don't want it to become my identity," she said. In her first interview since Beijing, Wietrzyk said she had suffered a bacterial infection from food poisoning but had gone into the race "feeling fresh, feeling really, really good". "It was a very sudden experience," she told the BBC.
"It wasn't until about halfway through the race where everything did transpire... In that moment, right then and there, as a very competitive person… and an elite athlete that I am, my only focus is on racing. "Obviously I did put other people at risk," she admitted.
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