HYROX has closed out its biggest and best World Championships with some incredible athlete performances and little doubt that the sport remains firmly on an upward trajectory.
There are still parts that need fine-tuning though, not least the Sled stations. Over the course of the event many people complained about a high variance between the different lanes. One post demonstrating the difference went viral and many were quick to blame the introduction of a new surface (turf).
However the turf was not to blame. HYROX released a statement saying that in fact the quality of some of the sleds was to blame for the variance. Not the new turf.
[wpcode id=”229888″]It is clear that this is something HYROX is working to improve, but for now competitors will have to factor into their race prep that not all sled pushes and pulls are the same.
See the statement from Moritz Fürste, co-founder of HYROX, in full below:
“Since we founded HYROX we are trying to build the best possible sport for everyone out there.
Seven years ago it was just a few of you and now over 600.000 participants raced throughout the season. With that growth, a lot of challenges occur.
We always said that we are hearing the feedback of our athletes loud and clear and that not a day goes by without us thinking about how to get better and optimize the sport.
The sled stations have been the most controversial HYROX stations since day one.
In order to create more global consistency, we invested into a new surface solution – the turf – for a better consistency across the station. And to be very clear: It worked. From a surface perspective we reached that goal of more consistency.
The second variable in this are the sleds. As all of you know, depending on the usage of the sleds they can be moved better or worse, but with the turf, we can control the range of resistance much better. Before every event we look into those specifics and exchange the sleds that go beyond a threshold that we consider within the acceptable range of resistance.
What happened this weekend is that we realized way too late that some sleds had fallen below that acceptable range.
We take full responsibility and want to apologise for all whose races have been affected.
We acknowledge that the sled stations have always been and always will leave reason for discussions but this weekend certain sleds fell below an acceptable range and it was our fault to not react quick enough.“
