Athlete Dies at CrossFit Games: What Does This Mean for the Exercise Craze?

The atmosphere at the CrossFit Games closing ceremonies last week at Dickies Arena, a 14,000-seat venue in Fort Worth, was decidedly celebratory.

Typically a triumphant moment for the men and women dubbed “the fittest on Earth” after competing in four days of grueling feats of physical strength and endurance, this year’s celebrations were overshadowed by the death of a competitor on the first day of competition. Lazar Dukic, a 28-year-old athlete from Serbia, died during an 800-meter open water swim in Marine Creek Lake.

Mr. Dukic’s death was the first in the 17-year history of the Games. His death has raised concerns, some long-standing, about the safety of CrossFit as both a training program and as a high-level sporting event.

When Greg Glassman, a personal trainer and former gymnast, founded CrossFit in the mid-’90s, he took an approach to exercise that was radically different from the bench presses and barbell curls that dominated gyms at the time. His methodology combined elements of Olympic lifting and gymnastics with movements that included kettlebells, rowing machines and jump ropes — a program “constantly varied, highly intensive functional movement” as Mr. Glassman originally described it.

Early CrossFit fans included law enforcement and the military, who associated it with determination and mental toughness. Mr. Glassman hasn’t tamped down that belief: Speaking about CrossFit in The Novel York Times in 2005, he said, “If the thought of falling off the rings and breaking your neck is so alien to you, we don’t want you in our ranks.”

But part of CrossFit’s appeal was that the workouts, while sometimes incredibly demanding, could be tailored to almost anyone’s needs: While one athlete had to jump onto a 30-inch box, another had to stand on a raised platform, getting the same stimulus but at different intensities.

This accessibility has helped CrossFit grew rapidly in 2000 and 2010, even if some considered the exercises hazardous for amateurs. An early, ironic brand mascot was “Uncle Rhabdo,” a cartoon clown the name comes from a potentially fatal muscle disease that CrossFit sometimes causes.

The dedication it inspired helped it outlast shorter fitness fads. CrossFit popularized the concept of “high-intensity interval training” and spawned a slew of imitators, including OrangeTheory, Barry’s Bootcamp, and F45. If you’ve ever done kettlebell swings, ball throws, or double jumps, you’ve felt CrossFit’s influence, changing the way countless Americans exercise.

After Mr. Glassman sold the company in 2020 amid scandal, CrossFit changed its message to further emphasize accessibility, abandoning its previous motto of “Forging Elite Fitness.” The company has sought to emphasize its openness to beginners, returning to Mr. Glassman’s theory that “the needs of an Olympian and our grandparents differ in degree, not kind.”

But CrossFit training and the CrossFit Games are meant to be different.

The CrossFit Games, a competition for elite athletes, have been held annually since 2007. The games were conceived as “a marketing effort at a time when the company didn’t have a marketing department,” said Adrian Bozman, CrossFit Games director. Over the years, they have become the subject of popular documentaries and a must-see event for fans.

The ostensible purpose of the CrossFit Games is to test the fittest on Earth by challenging them to overcome the “unknown and unknowable,” which CrossFit is supposed to prepare them for. The Games include amped-up versions of typical CrossFit movements, such as ponderous snatches or pull-ups, as well as more unusual tasks, such as jumping over hay bales, swinging a blacksmith’s hammer Or seated medicine ball throwOutdoor swimming events, while relatively common at the Games, would never be part of a CrossFit class.

Still, some top CrossFit athletes say the Games often push competitors too far, beyond what is necessary to test their fitness. During an outdoor event at the 2015 Games, several competitors fainted from heat exhaustion. Chris Hinshaw, Mat Fraser’s former Games-winning coach, Described how Mr Fraser almost drowned during a swimming competition in 2017.

“We have been talking about our safety concerns for a long time, but our requests have fallen on deaf ears,” said Pat Vellner, a veteran CrossFit Games competitor.

Questions about the safety of the race quickly returned after Mr. Dukic’s death, with some questioning the decision to hold the race and swim outdoors in Texas in August, when water temperature were allegedly unsafe; others wondered whether there were enough rescuers and safety personnel on site.

The morning after Mr. Dukic’s death, Dave Castro, CrossFit’s athletic director and Games programmer, said in an interview that safety “is always a consideration.” Mr. Castro declined repeated requests for an additional interview.

When Mr. Dukić died, the rest of the day’s events were canceled. But the next day, after hours of internal deliberations and consultations with other athletes and Mr. Dukić’s family, organizers decided to continue with a modified version of the competition schedule.

“We spent a lot of time talking about it, and we were clear that the decision had to be about how to honor him,” said Don Faul, CrossFit’s current CEO. “If we felt the right way to honor him was to cancel the Games, then we would definitely cancel the Games.”

Of the 80 competitors who competed, 13 withdrew immediately because of the decision to continue with the Games. (Among those who withdrew during that time were Jeffrey Adler and Laura Horvath, the reigning men’s and women’s champions.) More athletes withdrew from the event as it progressed, including Arielle Loewen.

“It was wrong to go out on the dance floor and pretend that everything was fine, pretend that everything was OK, pretend that the show had to go on when this is a tragedy and we should treat it as such,” Ms Loewen said.

The Association of Professional Fitness Athletes, a group that includes CrossFit Games athletes Brent Fikowski, Annie Thorisdottir and Mr. Vellner, has called for Mr. Castro to be removed as athletic director, suggesting the extent to which athletes hold the program responsible for Mr. Dukic’s death.

Tia-Clair Toomey, a 31-year-old seven-time champion from Australia, decided to stay in the competition because she had met Mr Dukic while competing at previous Games and believed “he could do it himself”.

Ms Toomey added that, in her opinion, “Dave and his team strive to make every event as unthreatening as possible.”

Reaction from CrossFit fans was similarly divided. Rob LaLonde, an Ottawa gym owner who attended the Games, said he was going through a “tornado of uncertainty about what to feel and think,” but added that he was glad the Games were continuing.

Thea Andreasdottir, a CrossFit athlete from Germany, said she had “never been so moved by the death of someone I didn’t really know,” and blamed the organization entirely for Mr. Dukic’s death.

Mr. Vellner, a CrossFit Games veteran, had hoped the tragedy would prompt some sort of reckoning among CrossFit leaders. But, he said, “there’s a fear that at the end of the day there won’t be any accountability.”

The question remains whether the death of an elite CrossFit Games athlete will discourage other athletes from competing, or prevent regular exercisers from going to their local CrossFit gyms. Most long-time CrossFitters understand that the Games are very different from fitness methodologies, and that what happens at one doesn’t reflect the other. But will that be clear to outsiders?

Danielle Brandon, 28, who competed in her sixth CrossFit Games this year, was among the athletes who decided to continue competing. She said she has always felt unthreatening competing despite the “risks that come with playing sports.”

“I mean, CrossFit itself — it’s kind of crazy, right?” Ms. Brandon said during a warm-up for the Games event, which included sprints, toes-to-bars and 70-pound dumbbells. “What’s so unthreatening about carrying a ponderous dumbbell overhead?”