Sports brand Puma appears to have removed a dedicated online sportswear collection associated with athlete Joanna Wietrzyk, as the Australian athlete continues to face scrutiny over her controversial victory at a recent Hyrox competition in Beijing. The "Joanna Wietrzyk x Puma" page on the company's online store now redirects to a generic Hyrox fitness and training page, with no products linked to Wietrzyk currently visible. The development doesn’t necessarily mean Puma has formally ended its relationship with Wietrzyk.
The company hasn’t publicly announced that her sponsorship has been terminated, and it remains unknown whether the unavailable collection reflects a deliberate response to the Beijing controversy, a technical issue, inventory changes, or part of a broader website update. Newsweek has reached out to both Puma and Wietrzyk for comment and is awaiting a response. https://www.instagram.com/p/DZvN0TUN8Yg/?hl=en Wietrzyk has been associated with Puma since at least October 2025, when the sportswear giant expanded its roster of elite Hyrox ambassadors as part of a renewed long-term partnership with Hyrox. Over the last year, the Australian athlete has become one of the faces of Puma's Hyrox marketing efforts, with the company launching a dedicated "Joanna Wietrzyk x Puma" online collection and featuring her in promotional material tied to its performance footwear and clothing ranges.
Wietrzyk suffered an episode of fecal incontinence while competing in the women’s elite race at Hyrox Beijing on September 12. She continued to complete the indoor course, which incorporates shared exercise stations and equipment, and won in a time of 1 hour, 1 minute, and 23 seconds. Images and videos of the incident circulated widely online, producing two competing reactions.
Some people praised Wietrzyk’s determination to finish, while others argued that continuing created a contamination risk for competitors, judges, and event workers. Wietrzyk appeared to address the controversy in a since-deleted Instagram post showing her in what looked like a hospital bed. In the post, she wrote “Go hard or go home they say... a win is a win,” before thanking people for their support and saying she would return.
In a post shared to Instagram on Thursday, Wietrzyk apologized over the incident, and confirmed she was forfeiting the Hyrox win after the backlash. In a statement published through its official Instagram account, Hyrox said that the protocols designed for elite competitions and mass participation had become “blurred.” It said the concerns raised by the community were legitimate and promised to review what had happened. Co-founder Moritz Fürste subsequently went on to say that the organization had made a mistake by failing to intervene immediately during the race.
He apologized to those affected and said it was ultimately his responsibility to anticipate these types of circumstances and take appropriate action. https://www.instagram.com/p/DdQ4xhpojoh/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&stkn=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== Hyrox has since updated its rulebook so a race director can now withdraw an athlete when blood, vomit, urine, or feces creates a welfare or contamination risk. Any such withdrawal is recorded on the leaderboard as Did Not Finish [DNF].” The change places responsibility on officials to intervene rather than leaving an athlete, who may be ill and competing under extreme pressure, to make the decision alone. Public reaction from within the sport has included criticism of the health and fairness implications, as well as concern about the personal attacks directed at Wietrzyk.
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