Over the course of this week, the high-intensity fitness racing world has been focused on Australian athlete Joanna Wietrzyk’s performance at an event in Beijing, in which she suffered sudden faecal incontinence but continued to race.

Hyrox co-founder Moritz Fürste has apologised “to all who were directly or indirectly involved”.

“Hyrox made a mistake by not reacting immediately during the race,” Fürste said in a statement on Instagram.

But will it put others off competing, and what could it mean for Hyrox, which was rumoured to be valued at US$700 million (NZ$1.2b) when Investment firm L Catterton and WndrCo took a stake this month.

University of Auckland senior lecturer in marketing Drew Franklin said he thought the brand would recover from the incident.

“I think it’s more of a short-term hit to Hyrox’s brand equity… not necessarily a lasting one.

“We often call it a spillover effect – but I see that might have double meaning in this sense – to other partnerships or potential partnerships that Hyrox might engage in.

“The athlete’s accident isn’t really the issue, it was Hyrox’s failure to intervene and I suppose for the community at large it challenges some of those core associations of safety, hygiene, fair competition.

“There is a bit at stake because Hyrox enjoys quite a lot of co-branding with gyms, sponsors and commercial partners that may otherwise worry the spillover effects may carry into their brand equity to their brand… but Hyrox have responded appropriately. They’ve apologised, changed the rules. If those safeguards are applied consistently the brand awareness they enjoy and have enjoyed to date and the loyal community following should contain or buffer the damage.

“Perhaps a bit of bruising but not a permanent loss of value unless these sorts of operational failures occur again.”

Lou O’Reilly, of communications firm O’Reilly & Co, agreed it should not cause lasting damage for the brand.

“Even though the incident was significant, it’s not going to wipe millions off the value of the brand. Hyrox itself is built around providing a professionally run, consistent experience for athletes all over the world.

“During that particular event, they lost control of that experience. The upside is they’ve responded, changed the rules, and you’d expect them to be much more stringent in future.”

Franklin said with community-based brands like Hyrox “your people are your ambassadors and it’s a big part of their own social identity, as opposed to something that may be a little bit more transactional, like your brand of cereal or toothpaste or that sort of thing”.

Northland Activ8 gym owner Miranda Harrison coaches Hyrox participants and said most people were laughing about the incident.

“It’s probably a good thing for Hyrox as even though it’s negative those that didn’t know about Hyrox now do.”