HYROX World Championships Head to France

The global fitness racing event organiser will host its ‘23–’24 championships in Nice, France at the Palais des Congrès Acropolis.

Winners circle. The three-day event is slated for next June, where participants will compete in elite and age-designated divisions, including singles and doubles races, with a $150K prize purse up for grabs.

Mass movement. Turning functional fitness into a mass-participation event akin to a 5K, HYROX founder Christian Toetzke designed the race format with accessibility in mind. Appealing to an array of exercisers, the series has seen sign-ups grow from 11K in 2018 to more than 175K in the current season.

Taking notice, organisers are racing to create HYROX-inspired events of their own.

• Earlier this year, UK-based ATHX announced its “continuous 2.5-hour” functional fitness competition.
• Debuting this fall in the US, Hybricon Games from Battle Bunker aim to set the benchmark for both mental and physical conditioning.
• Spartan Race is expanding its fitness decathlon DEKA FIT, offering events, gym affiliates, and coaching certifications.

In the gym. Building a pipeline of would-be competitors, earlier this year, HYROX partnered with Xponential Fitness-owned Body Fit Training (BFT) for in-studio programming geared towards fitness racing.

Another approach, European health club operator PureGym is hosting a fitness competition for exercisers over 50 years old to encourage active ageing and member engagement.

Looking ahead: While CrossFit’s annual affiliate-run Open and globally broadcast Games contests paved the way for fitness competitions, the events of tomorrow are removing barriers and overhead to hosting mass-participation races the world over.