How a German OIympian helped embrace CrossFit to build Hyrox, a next-gen fitness competition with 34,000% growth

As the race progresses, the music fades while the clapping and cheering get louder. The participants, now glistening with sweat, need all the motivation they can get. As you scan the room, you’ll see all kinds of people—from Hyrox’s first-timers to chiseled athletes, Gen Zs to baby boomers.

The crowd cheering on the huge arena makes the racing experience equal parts “cool” and serious business.

Hyrox’s ingredients might sound familiar to any other fitness fad: an hour-long test of stamina and physical endurance, a ticking clock and a clear finish line.

Competitions are not new to sports – think Spartan Race and Tough Mudder, which have been around longer. Hyrox bills itself as a fitness race that differs from its archenemy, CrossFit, a type of training that is more technical and harder to master than Olympic weightlifting and gymnastics.

But more importantly, it sets itself apart from the marathons and world athletics championships by asking a simple enough question: If going to the gym is a sport, how can we make something more out of it?

“There was a void in the world of sports,” said Moritz Fürste, co-founder of Hyrox and a three-time German ice hockey Olympian. Fate in an interview. “It’s like this lost part of the fitness world where people, for whatever reason, go to the gym every day, but they never compete.

Seven years later, Hyrox’s reputation precedes it around the world. While its first iteration in 2017 saw a paltry 618 participants, the race has grown exponentially since then, with the 2023/24 season concluding with over 210,000 participants across 30 cities. That’s despite a little blip called COVID-19 that kept people locked in their homes for nearly two years.

Hyrox continues to grow. Fürste believes that what the competition has achieved so far is just the tip of the iceberg as it continues to attract average gym goers, elite athletes and CrossFit enthusiasts, whether in Miami, Milan or Melbourne.

Jumped past seatbacks

Hyrox started with stumbling.

It was about 10 years ago when Fürste and his business partner and Hyrox CEO Christian Toetzke first met. They were instrumental in Germany’s campaign to host the 2024 Olympics and Paralympics.

Despite a convincing performance, the people of Hamburg voted against hosting the games in a referendum in 2015.

“We went from opening bottles of champagne to literally resealing them and giving them back to the supermarket,” Fürste said of the day they learned of the referendum.

But if sports teach you one thing, it’s to never quit at the first stumble. Fürste and Toetze, a veteran of sports events, continued to discuss ways to collaborate.

As they searched for ideas, they came across a surprising statistic that most people considered working out at the gym to be their ‘sport’. It left the duo with lingering questions—and the seed idea for what would later evolve into the Hyrox competition we see today.

“We were like, ‘Okay, interesting, but what the hell is your sport?'” Fürste said. “If you would think [of] all the people who are officially members of a gym, I think we’re talking about the biggest organized sport in the world.”

Hyrox was born.

Rise above

Once they had whipped up the Hyrox model, the next challenge was to convince people that, unlike other sporting events, it was indeed accessible. It offers various “divisions” based on age and fitness level to encourage more participants.

With a few hundred racers in the first year and a single digit thousand the following year, the idea of ​​mass participation was not an easy sell. Soon after, the pandemic hit and quickly limited the number of people seeking out such events.

But Fürste and the rest of the Hyrox team were determined to keep the brand in people’s minds – so they organized a race in Hamburg with several rounds of daily COVID-19 testing.

“I think we spent $100,000 on this pandemic, without any international hope that it would ever get better,” Fürste said.

Although a little outlandish, this effort paid off. In 2022, when the world started to open up, people seemed more interested and willing to try new things, which Hyrox still felt was, at the time.

The number of participants and race places began to increase steadily before the number of runners surpassed the New York and London marathons, which were around 50,000.

Elevate the competition experience

Helena Sharpe, a 44-year-old recruitment manager at JP Morgan, had been on a journey to change her lifestyle for five years. In the process, she dabbled in strength training, intense cardio and more.

Last year she set herself the goal of completing the Hyrox Race in London in May 2024 to motivate herself to get back into fitness after shoulder surgery. And now, having experienced the race once, Sharpe says she’s confident she’ll do it again.

“I just think the atmosphere motivates you,” Sharpe said fate, adding that it was like nothing she had ever done before. “Something about it… I didn’t feel too scared.”

Because Hyrox competitions take place in indoor arenas, the group has much more freedom with the atmosphere it creates for its participants – whether it’s with opening marches, colorful lights or motivational speeches.

“We’re trying to create a setup that makes real athletes out of the participants,” Fürste said. He compared the race to an iconic New York marathon, which is as much about the place as the race itself. And like CrossFit, Hyrox also emphasizes the sense of community to boost people’s motivation.

While it is like many things people have heard of or experienced before, Hyrox is also different from them in important ways. For example, Fürste claims that most people try to run a marathon as a bucket list, while only a few are repeat runners.

But he wants Hyrox to be something people feel they can constantly improve at, just like with any other sport. He also noted that, unlike other sports, Hyrox tries not to keep its events exclusively to the crème de la crème.

The structure of the competition also helps prevent injuries — a common concern with CrossFit — as it aims to use different body parts and muscle groups, Fürste says. But he believes there is more room to educate people to pace themselves and be more aware of their abilities when they enter a Hyrox competition.

As Toetze said New York Times in April, the models established by marathons and CrossFit are still excellent benchmarks of success. The latter specifically aims to build general fitness instead of increasing just one domain, as running or rowing might. The Hyrox uses some of these forms of fitness while still keeping it simple, which is why Fürste is confident that the Hyrox will deliver.

The excitement for the race is palpable – in Birmingham, 16,000 tickets were sold in just four minutes. The event is looking at over 450,000 participants this coming season, more than doubling the number of participants this year, plus more race days.

While this level of growth may not last forever, Hyrox is undoubtedly here to stay, Fürste says.

“I am 100% convinced that in 10 years the overall sport of fitness racing will be as big as running on a global scale,” said Fürste.