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She’s got unfinished business.
Joanna Wietrzyk, a 24-year-old Hyrox competitor from Australia, has announced that she’ll return to the fitness competition on Friday after famously soiling herself at a previous event and continuing to race.
The Beijing incident in September ignited a heated online debate about whether Wietrzyk was a hero for powering through the fecal incontinence to finish in first place — or a villain for making everyone else deal with her droppings.
On Wednesday, she shared that she’s taken the last two months to reflect on what happened, and she’s excited to return to racing in Hamburg, Germany, on Friday.
“I’m back out there on the race floor, and I’m super excited to go back doing what I love,” she said on Instagram. “Hopefully, see you all out there.”
‘It’s been a very hard situation to navigate’
Wietrzyk said she took the weeks that have passed since the Sept. 12 race in Beijing to reflect.
“Firstly, I just want to say that I’m truly, truly so sorry to everyone that I affected, whether they were spectators or participants out on that race floor for my decision to choose to continue to race,” she said.
“Having that time to reflect, I’ve really learned a lot from the situation,” she added. “It’s been a very hard situation to navigate for me and very confronting as well.”
She praised the outpouring of support she received and revealed that she was in Hamburg for the competition starting Friday.
Wietrzyk will be participating in the Elite 15, a series of competitions to qualify for the Hyrox World Championships. It’s a “closed, invitation-only series designed for the very best athletes in the world,” the company said.
Top-ranked athletes compete at Elite 15 races to cinch a top 3 place, which earns them a qualification spot for the world championship.
What happened in Beijing?
Wietrzyk reportedly had food poisoning before her fateful September competition.
She’d completed two runs and the SkiErg (a machine that simulates cross-country skiing) without incident when she got to the fourth exercise station: burpee broad jumps. That’s where she suddenly suffered explosive diarrhea.
Photos and video taken through the rest of the race show fecal matter streaming down her legs as she completed another run, a seated row, a farmer’s carry, a sandbag lunge and wall ball exercises.
Chinese officials said staff swiftly cordoned off the affected areas, disinfected the site through the end of the day, removed contaminated equipment and arranged to replace the carpet once the event was over, according to the South China Morning Post.
But many participants and spectators say that wasn’t enough — they saw poop smeared on the equipment and the track, causing several athletes to fall.
“HYROX has clear biocontaminant and medical procedures in place. In this instance, an unforeseen situation arose in which protocols designed for elite competition and mass participation became blurred, 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 organizers “made a mistake by not reacting immediately during the race.”
He added that the company made “rulebook changes immediately,” with “new rules and procedures in place to prevent situations like this from happening again.”
Meanwhile, Wietrzyk apologized in a statement and said she’d “retroactively withdraw” from the race and forfeit the points she’d earned.
