How do you know someone does Hyrox? They tell you. Repeatedly. Think of it as 2026’s answer to a Harvard degree: dropped into breakfast conversation at least four times, then documented across Facebook for the rest of the weekend.
We all know that person. The Hyrox devotee who waxes lyrical about the sport, posts about it, trains for it. It sounds hectic and a week after an event you’ll find them at the biokineticist, easing through a gentler session, still recounting the thrill of the experience. Maybe you’re that person.
If so, you’re in good company. In nine years, Hyrox has mushroomed from a 600-person race in Hamburg into a phenomenon in almost 50 countries. Its organisers expect 2.5-million finishers worldwide next year, more than the 1.3-million people who run marathons annually. About 20,000 gyms are licensed to train for it, and the sport is on the cusp of becoming Olympic.
Hyrox’s chief growth officer, Douglas Gremmen, has been visiting South Africa and speaks at the Mind Matters Summit at the Cape Town International Convention Centre on October 29. He talks about the Hyrox journey and the power of community, building the brand and how luxury and wellbeing are shifting from products to shared emotional and physical experiences. Hyrox runs events in Cape Town and Joburg, and the Mother City has had between 8,000 and 9,000 racers, up from 1,500, across two events in the past year.
Tiny to Olympic
The first global races in 2017 drew about 600 people. Growth was slow in 2018 and 2019, and Covid knocked things off-kilter, but when racing resumed in September 2021, there were 600 athletes in Amsterdam and 600 in London. Five years on, the events are massive. “Some of our events have 45,000 people… New York has 55,000 people,” says Gremmen. “We’re bigger than most of the city marathons.”
He puts the rise down to three things. The first is identity. Millions of people go to the gym, but few can say what they are training for. Hyrox offers a predictable race with the same format everywhere, which gives training a purpose. “We’ve given fitness an identity.”
The second is the post-Covid shift in how people see gyms, now as social places as much as healthy ones. The third is social media, where each cohort of racers recruits the next. “The moment you see a person you associate with doing it, you’re like, I can do it.”
Gremmen says Hyrox is about to be adopted by the international triathlon union, with an announcement imminent. It would not become a new federation but a second discipline alongside triathlon, with both competing at the Olympics. “Rather than this being a new sport and a new federation, this is literally an additional discipline next to triathlon,” he says. “That’s kind of our quickest route in. It’s 90% approved by the Olympic committee as well.” The target is 2032.
He sees the lack of history as an asset. Most sports are hundreds of years old, with federations that are hard to break through. “We have no legacy … we’re the first sport built in the digital era.” The brand will stay distinct from the sport, the way Ironman sits alongside triathlon. The Olympic discipline will be called fitness racing, with Hyrox as its gold standard. It is also a defence against the brand becoming a generic word. “All of a sudden it’s like jacuzzi, and you lose the ability to protect the brand name.”
At the top of the pyramid, the best 30 racers in the world, drawn from about 2-million competitors this year, race as professionals. About 1% of athletes qualify for the world championships.
Sport vs fitness
“We build a sport, not another fitness trend,” Gremmen says. “Fitness trends come and go. Sports tend to last for generations.”
You don’t need to be an athlete, but you do need a base level of fitness. A race is 8km of running, broken up by workout stations built around what Gremmen calls the seven natural body movements: squat, push, pull, lunge, hinge, rotation and gait. Because the skills are basic, two people of different strengths can do the same workout with different weights. Intensity and weight category are the athlete’s choice, and racers can walk, jog or run. “You could walk 8km and still do the workout,” he says.
Anyone can enter as a single, in doubles or in a relay. About 80% of women entering the sport race doubles, finding a partner to train and compete with, and mixed doubles is growing fast.
Gremmen compares preparing for Hyrox to training for a half-marathon: a weekly 45-minute gym class is the foundation, and a longer session on Sundays builds capacity. Racing happens only at big expos, so no-one needs to race every week.
He describes two kinds of athlete. Some train all year, round after round. Others come and go around football or rugby seasons. The oldest participant — in Dallas, Texas — is 91.
Hyrox does not own a single gym and does not want to. It runs events and licenses its name, training and tools to gyms, which pay a fee (about $130 a month per gym) to be associated with the brand and attract people who want to train for the sport. By Gremmen’s count, 20,000 gyms are licensed worldwide, with 1,000 joining a month. For context, he notes, there are only 30,000 golf clubs in the world. He believes a similar number of gyms already train people for Hyrox without paying for the badge, and they are the next target. Eventually he expects 50,000–75,000 licensed gyms.
The pitch to operators is retention. “The gym is very transactional,” he says. “You go in, you pay your membership, they’d rather have you not show up.” Sports clubs are different. “I don’t leave my tennis club in 25 years. I don’t leave my golf club in 20 years.” Training with coaches and community turns a gym into something closer to a club, which he says changes how operators treat their members and staff. “We don’t want to compete with the fitness space. We want to drive traffic into the infrastructure that’s already there.”
In South Africa, Hyrox is in Virgin Active, Planet Fitness and several other gyms. About 70% of its local partners are independents. Gremmen puts the local total at about 350 gyms across the country.
Space race
The races are held in huge expo halls, which makes South Africa one of the harder markets. Gremmen describes Hyrox as almost a logistics company. Each event needs 15,000m²–30,000m² indoors, the equivalent of two or three soccer pitches, and he says the country has only two such venues, the Cape Town and Sandton convention centres. A handful exist across the whole of Africa.
A full roadshow needs up to 20 trailers of kit, with tens of thousands of kilograms to ship. The company runs 16 roadshows to cover about 150 events a year, and the set-up looks the same in China as it does in Cape Town or Brazil. Europe is easy, with 30 countries and more than 50 events across three years of roadshows. North America runs one roadshow of 25 events. South Africa has two events, in Joburg and Cape Town, and equipment is stored in a warehouse in between. “It’s almost like Formula One coming to town,” Gremmen says.
Race tickets average between $120 and $140 worldwide. South Africa and India, two of the newer markets, are cheaper, with South Africa closer to $80–$90 (about R1,320–R1,480), but Gremmen says price has not been the barrier.
Sponsorship is critical. Early partners were fitness-native brands such as Puma and Red Bull. Hyrox has since signed Amazon globally, after the retailer saw a surge in searches for nutrition, shoes and equipment, along with global banks, insurers and carmakers.
Gremmen says these brands are chasing a health-conscious consumer who tends to be more careful with every decision, from what car to drive to how sustainable it is. Puma has built the Hyrox name into its apparel range, with the brand’s logo woven into the Y of the Hyrox logo. Adidas and Nike are also making shoes aimed at hybrid racing, which he calls the biggest compliment the sport could get.
Ownership of the group changed recently. Hyrox’s founders have regained majority control of the business they created in a deal completed last month that reportedly values the company at about €600m. The founders bought the business back from Chinese shareholders and sold 35% to L Catterton, the private equity firm backed by LVMH, and to WndrCo, the vehicle of former DreamWorks executive and Hollywood heavyweight Jeffrey Katzenberg. Gremmen says it was less about the money and more about having access to L Catterton’s expertise in lifestyle brands and Katzenberg’s in global media.
The plan is to have Hyrox in 150 major cities, up from 125 now. Events are getting longer: New York this year runs for 14 days and expects 75,000 athletes. Gremmen wants them to become cultural events with music and entertainment. “We’re trying to bring Coachella meets US Open meets the New York Marathon into one event,” he says.
“The way that fitness is perceived in South Africa is the same as it is perceived in China, the same as it is perceived in America,” Gremmen says. Wider competition worries him less than the question of whether other forms of entertainment will pull people away from health and wellness altogether.
The message he brings to South Africa is about balance. Hyrox is performance-driven, he says, but performance depends on recovery, workload management and a healthy mind. Some people become so mindful that they forget the body, and others do the reverse. “Strength and endurance training is a key component of longevity.”
