{"id":896616,"date":"2026-09-18T14:18:12","date_gmt":"2026-09-18T14:18:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/896616\/"},"modified":"2026-09-18T14:18:12","modified_gmt":"2026-09-18T14:18:12","slug":"australian-hyrox-athlete-joanna-wietrzyk-breaks-silence-after-soiling-herself-during-race","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/896616\/","title":{"rendered":"Australian Hyrox athlete Joanna Wietrzyk breaks silence after soiling herself during race"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Australian Hyrox athlete who created a global storm after soiling herself during a race has broken her silence.<\/p>\n

Joanna Wietrzyk issued a statement on her personal Instagram page to address the situation that unravelled after her race in Beijing.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Australian Joanna Wietrzyk took part in HYROX Beijing 2026 on September 12.\u00a0Getty Images<\/p>\n

Wietrzyk and the sport of Hyrox thundered into the headlines this week after footage of the 23-year-old competing with excrement running down her legs went viral.<\/p>\n

Her decision to keep racing and finish the event despite the potential health hazards posed to other competitors and staff received almost universal backlash.<\/p>\n

In her post, Wietrzyk said she wanted to offer \u201cmy sincere apology to the people of China, my fellow competitors, the spectators and the Hyrox organisers for what happened during the race in Beijing\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI felt completely fit and healthy at the start of the race, with no reason to expect any illness,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\u201cLooking back, I regret the decision to not have stepped off the track. I recognise that I should have made a different choice.<\/p>\n

\u201cI take responsibility for my decision to continue and am deeply sorry for the discomfort and disruption it caused.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wietrzyk said on reflection, she had chosen to retroactively withdraw from the race and forfeit the points she earned.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u00a0am learning from this experience and will carry those lessons with me, including remembering that there is more to life than racing and knowing when it is right to step away,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Wietrzyk has broken her silence to apologise over what happened.\u00a0Getty Images<\/p>\n

She ended the post by thanking the people who supported \u201cboth as an athlete and as a person… and to everyone who has reached out with kindness and support\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cI will be taking some time to recover, reflect and look after myself and my family away from the noise.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hyrox is an endurance racing format that holds events across the world, including in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane and Perth.<\/p>\n

The race involves eight running stations of one kilometre each, which are broken up by functional workouts including ski and rowing machines.<\/p>\n

Wietrzyk\u2019s\u00a0actions during the Beijing event sparked a response from the race format\u2019s founder Moritz F\u00fcrste, who apologised and admitted the organisers made a mistake by allowing her to finish the race.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the end, it is my job to foresee these potential incidents \u2013 and I did not,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Hyrox said it had since implemented \u201cclear biocontaminant and medical procedures in place\u201d.<\/p>\n

The rules have been updated to state: \u201cIf a racer\u2019s blood, vomit, urine, or faeces poses a welfare or contamination risk to the racer or to other racers, a race director may withdraw the racer from the race on medical grounds\u201d.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Australian Hyrox athlete who created a global storm after soiling herself during a race has broken her…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":896617,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-896616","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896616","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=896616"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/896616\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/896617"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=896616"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=896616"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=896616"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}