Australian athlete Joanna Wetschik, who suffered from diarrhoea during the Hyrox functional fitness competition in Beijing in September, has admitted that she made the wrong decision and put others at risk by continuing to compete.
In an exclusive interview with the BBC ahead of her return to the sport, Wetschik suggested that her desire to win the competition had clouded her judgement:
“It was my decision to continue competing, so I take full responsibility for it,” she said.
When asked why she had continued to compete, the athlete replied:
“I really wasn’t thinking about the people around me… Looking back, the decision I made was wrong, and I sincerely apologise to everyone who was affected by it.”
The 24-year-old athlete said that this experience and the subsequent negative reaction had been “traumatic”.
She also revealed that she had considered quitting the sport in which she holds the world record.
In Hyrox, competitors take turns running one kilometre and performing physical exercises, including pushing a sledge, doing box jumps, indoor rowing and lunges with a sandbag.
The popularity of this competition has grown rapidly since it was founded in 2017 in Hamburg, in northern Germany, and it is now held all over the world.
Photo credit: Getty Images
About halfway through the race last month, Vetschik was struck by a bout of diarrhoea.
Images showing traces of faeces on parts of her body were widely circulated online.
When asked whether the organisers should have stopped her, the athlete replied that no one had told her to stop at the time.
Hyrox co-founder Moritz Fürste apologised, stating that failing to react immediately during the race had been a mistake.
New rules have now been introduced which give race directors the right to disqualify athletes if vomit, urine or faeces pose a risk of contamination or a threat to their own well-being or that of other participants in a competition that is predominantly held indoors using shared equipment.
Although Vetschik initially took a firm stance in an Instagram post (which she subsequently deleted), the week after the Beijing competition she apologised and stated that she would forfeit her victory and retroactively withdraw from the race.
Ahead of Friday’s competition in Hamburg, she said she was “nervous” about her return and hoped that this high-profile incident would not define her as a person.
“I don’t want this to define me as a person,” she says.
So what actually happened?
In her first interview since Beijing, Vetschik said she had suffered a bacterial infection caused by food poisoning, but had lined up at the start “feeling fresh, feeling very, very well”.
“It happened very suddenly,” she told the BBC. “It was only about halfway through the race that it all happened… At that moment, right there and then, as a very ambitious person… and a top-level athlete, I was focused solely on the competition.”
“Obviously, I did put other people at risk,” Vetschik admitted.
According to reports, Hyrox China subsequently refunded the entry fees to some participants.
Photo credit: Getty Images
Vetschik also said she regretted her first social media post after the race, which contained the phrase ‘Go hard or go home’.
She explained that she had been in “fight-or-flight mode”.
“I didn’t really think about how the public would perceive the situation,” said the athlete.
When asked whether her apology could be seen as an attempt to minimise damage to her reputation or as a belated reaction, she replied that she hadn’t expected the incident to attract such widespread attention.
“I needed these few days to think everything through and come to terms with it.”
Speaking about the psychology of elite-level athletes, she said:
“They are so focused on winning and on achieving the best possible result, making the most of their training and demonstrating their level of physical fitness to the world.”
Reflecting on the events of recent weeks, Vetshik added:
“There’s more to life… than just racing and just winning.”
After Vetshik’s identity was revealed online, Hyrox stated that any participant who sent the athlete insults or threats would be barred from future events.
The athlete noted that there were people who supported her and wanted to make sure she was alright, but at the same time there were those who showed just how “toxic” social media can be.
Vetshik told the BBC that it had been a “psychologically and emotionally draining period” and that she had not expected such a global level of attention. She said her family had also received threats.
“It was a very instructive experience for me to see the impact of modern social media, especially from the perspective of a 24-year-old simply taking part in a competition,” she noted.
“Yes, I did make the wrong decision, but I don’t think I deserved such a wave of criticism and such intense scrutiny online… After all, I’m only human,” added Vetshik.
She also explained that she had tried to stay off the internet and, for a while, had sought to ‘shut myself off from the world’.
“But I can’t do that forever. I can still achieve much more in this sport, so the key for me now is mental resilience, which will enable me to inspire others through what I’ve had to go through,” she said.