The fitness race organizer Hyrox is facing criticism after an athlete soiled herself during an event in Beijing, but was allowed to continue competing.
Hyrox CEO Christian Toetzke joins Yahoo Finance Executive Editor Brian Sozzi to discuss how the incident will change rules in future competition and how it's affected brand perception.
Christian, I want to ask you a little bit about what happened in Beijing. I totally want to be sensitive to the the situation. You know, I've competed uh in Hyrox. My next race is in Nashville. So, for me, that's where it's coming from as a competitor in these races. I enjoy training for them. Uh what type of new rules are you putting in place so that does not happen again?
Yeah, it's it's actually really simple and I'm not saying it was a simple situation, but of course, there were two things and we said this right away. Uh and we apologize for this that we should have stopped uh the athlete even against her will to continue the race. That was clear and then we immediately adjusted the the rule so that this will never happen again. You will everyone, whatever it is and also um not in what happened in Beijing but in general, uh if there is any kind of impact or risk for any other athletes, you have to stop the race and we will we will monitor that that people then have to immediately end the race uh to keep everyone safe.
So just you you would stop the entire race or just that person?
No, no, definitely just the lead. The athlete has to stop and we take them off the of the field of play immediately when something in this regard is happening. So there will be no impact for any other athletes.
If I'm in this race, Christian, I see a situation like that, because you saw so many fans in there and they're watching this happen in real time. What what should I do?
No, then please if you see that, refer to a judge or to refer to an official that then if they because sometimes there's so much going on, you don't even see it immediately. And then they will be they will step in and they will they will follow the protocol and they will they will talk to this athlete and it will be solved in the interest of everyone is doing the race.
This has gotten significant uh attention, Christian. What do you think this is, has this hurt the brand perception or if you zoom out, it has perhaps taken Hyrox uh just driven a lot of awareness for a brand that people may not have heard of before?
I really don't want to speculate about it. We would have been very happy if this would not have happened. I can't say more to that. Uh we what we do is we want to deliver an amazing new sport every weekend and you have you have experienced it. We want to deliver amazing events where everyone has fun, everyone gets active, everyone is doing sport with thousands of people that come together. and we want to do that better uh every day when we're operating events and of course, we there are many areas still where we have to get better and we will. Uh and every event is actually better than the one before. Um that's all I can say to that. Um uh that's what we do every day. And of course, uh but look, it's a big it's a big operation, it's a big organization. Many, many people are involved. Uh sometimes there are events that are very hard to to see see them coming or whatsoever and then we immediately react. I think that's the way how you can handle such a situation.
