By Bonnie Clark

In sports, stories of athletes overcoming adversity to win the day are legion.

One of the most famous sports moments of all time is of gymnast Kerri Strug triumphantly sticking the landing of her vault while balancing on one leg at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. Strug famously injured herself after her first attempt at the vault but persisted and went on to clinch the win for Team USA, joining the pantheon of storied Olympic gold medalists like Jesse Owens and Greg Louganis.

But not all athletic feats of derring-do are equal.

Recently, at HYROX, an international fitness competition combining running and exercise, Australian athlete Joanna Wietrzyk chose to ignore a case of intestinal distress and soiled herself and much of the equipment at this indoor event. Though Wietrzyk went on to prevail, the win came with a giant asterisk. Can you really expect athletes to perform burpees in a literal biohazard?  

Within hours, photos and videos went viral. Pundits and commentators waxed on about whether she showed fortitude or foolishness. HYROX found itself thrust into a media firestorm and initially released a statement seeming to support the athlete and her decision: “We ask our athletes to push themselves to the highest levels. At times, they will go beyond what even we thought was possible. That courage, resilience and refusal to give in are precisely what makes elite athletes so extraordinary.”

That statement didn’t go over well from the chattering class who rightly criticized organizers for failing to pull the individual from the competition because of the health risks to the rest of the field. While HYROX said “an unforeseen situation arose in which protocols designed for elite competition and mass participation became blurred,” media sleuths pointed out the hypocrisy. The rulebook previously contained a two-minute penalty for spitting or clearing nostrils onto the floor. If spitting gets you pulled out of the competition, wouldn’t defecating all over the equipment be even worse?  

After the competition, HYROX announced that it had updated its rulebook to state, “If a racer’s blood, vomit, urine, or feces poses a welfare or contamination risk to the racer or other racers, a Race Director may withdraw the racer from the race on medical grounds, in line with HYROX’s medical and hygiene SOPS.” Well, kudos, I guess, for clearing that up.

So, where did HYROX go wrong?

The organizers seemed initially to view this as another athlete-overcoming-adversity narrative, failing to consider not just the other competitors, but the spectators and staff who had to clean up after her mess.  

Following the event, Wietrzyk posted a photo of herself on a stretcher hooked up to an IV with the caption: “Go hard or go home…a win is a win.” (She later apologized for failing to remove herself and forfeited the win).  

The photo of the athlete on the stretcher—a literal sanitized counter to the widespread graphic imagery—has the feeling of an iconic sports moment, not unlike Strug’s famous pose.

But, again, Strug wasn’t endangering other people (and it’s worth noting that, though she persevered and won the gold for her team, Strug had to pull out of the individual competitions and was forced to retire from gymnastics). 

The takeaway is that every story is complex and nuanced. It’s easy to label something a comeback story or a triumph-over-adversity narrative, but that misses the complexity of the situation. While HYROX organizers should have acted more quickly in the moment to follow the spirit of the rulebook and remove the athlete from the competition, they also should have been more thoughtful in their response.

In today’s fast-moving media environment, what seems like a simple, straightforward statement or social post can easily spiral into a multi-day story. That’s likely to happen in a case like this, involving highly graphic images and visceral emotions.

Before weighing in, HYROX should have considered all the implications for its many stakeholders—competitors, spectators and staff—and addressed its response to each group.

Instead, it took the approach of centering the athlete, who made the quantifiably wrong choice to put her own needs over those of her fellow athletes and the larger community. It’s natural to feel sympathy for an athlete who has worked hard and doesn’t want to quit, but we all have faced situations beyond our control, and we don’t jeopardize others’ health and well-being in service of our ambition.

When working with clients, we take all these considerations into account before developing a strategy and response that considers all the various stakeholders, not simply the loudest one.