Joanna Wietrzyk crossed the line at Beijing’s National Speed Skating Oval in 1:01:23, the quickest time in the Pro Women’s field. The 24-year-old Australian already held the women’s solo pro world record, so a win was not a surprise.

What has been talked about ever since is what happened to her in the middle of it.

Wietrzyk suffered sudden “faecal incontinence” roughly halfway through the race and kept going, and footage of it was circulating on Weibo and Instagram within hours. (We’ll let you go find it.)

Two days later, Hyrox co-founder Moritz Fürste posted an apology to Instagram. He said the organisation made a mistake by not reacting immediately during the race, apologised to everyone affected directly or indirectly, and said new rules and procedures were already in place.

The company had earlier insisted it has clear biocontaminant and medical procedures written down, but conceded that an unforeseen situation arose and the protocols became blurred. That is a diplomatic way of saying the officials on the floor did not know what they were meant to do. No shit.

Shared equipment is the sticking point. Chinese media reported that some participants wanted a refund on the grounds they were made to touch contaminated gear, and Hyrox China has since said the affected area was isolated and disinfected once racing finished.

Hyrox hands out time penalties for spitting, clearing your nose, littering and tipping water over your head, which made the decision to wave through something considerably messier look very strange to the people paying entry fees.

Anthony Huang, an associate professor at the National Taiwan University of Sport, told the BBC the episode pointed to a results-driven attitude inside the company.

He argued that a mature sporting culture has to ask how you won rather than only whether you won, and questioned whether commercial growth has outrun the ability to actually run the sport.

That is the more useful question, because Wietrzyk did what elite endurance athletes have always done.

Paula Radcliffe stopped at the 22-mile mark of the 2005 London Marathon in full view of the cameras and still won it, and Chinese marathoner Li Meizhen finished the Hengshui Lake Marathon this year with menstrual blood on her legs.

Hyrox also had to publish a separate statement about the abuse Wietrzyk copped once her identity spread online, promising permanent bans for anyone sending threats through comments or direct messages.

She posted a photo from an IV drip after the race, captioned with a line about a win being a win, before taking it down.

Hyrox launched in Hamburg in 2017, reached mainland China at the end of 2024, and now has more than 500 affiliated gyms across the country offering Hyrox-specific training, according to Xinhua. Demand for the Beijing race was heavy enough that organisers added a fourth day to fit everyone in.

You can see the same pull everywhere else. Gyms from Bondi to Bali have built entire programs around the format, as we found in Canggu earlier this year, and Nike has gone as far as engineering a whole shoe system for hybrid racing.

Beijing made it obvious that the rulebook hasn’t kept pace with the queue outside the door, and it took an Australian having the worst hour of her career for anyone to notice.