New Book on Greg Glassman Promises Not to “Shy Away from the Controversies”
Calum Marsh’s The Fittest People on Earth: The Rise and Fall of a Fitness Phenomenon, the “never-been-told true story” of the origins of Greg Glassman and CrossFit, Inc. is currently slated to come out sometime this year.
“After the events of the summer of 2020, the journalist in me knew that this was a dramatic, complex story that deserved to be told in full,” Marsh said.
The book follows the sport’s early days getting kicked out of globo gyms to becoming a global brand, all the way to Glassman selling of the company amid controversy and the firing of Dave Castro.
Marsh is a regular long-form writer for The New York Times, whose pieces have also appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, The Atlantic, Playboy, Esquire, GQ, The New Republic, and New York Magazine.
It’s worth noting: One key difference between the myriad of long-form journalism profiling Glassman and CrossFit previously is Marsh has been a CrossFitter for the last three years. He currently trains at a Toronto affiliate six days a week.
- Marsh started in early 2018 during the height of the CrossFit Games and watched while the Games season was changed, COVID-19 permanently closed many gyms and the controversial summer of 2020 that ended with Glassman selling CrossFit to Eric Roza.
- Most, if not all, journalism on the subject has come from non-CrossFitting authors.
“At the same time, as a dedicated CrossFitter myself, I’ve seen how much the sport has been misunderstood and mischaracterized in the media, and I wanted to approach the story with an insider’s perspective,” added Marsh. “One that could show what’s great about CrossFit as a sport while digging into CrossFit’s dark side as a company.”
One big thing: No published book has yet to exhaustively cover CrossFit’s extensive and controversial history. More than a year-and-a-half after Roza bought the company, there are now even more former staffers to interview.
- Marsh has already conducted hundreds of hours of interviews with a who’s who of CrossFit’s past and present and said the book “includes new revelations about Glassman and never before heard stories about CrossFit’s early years.”
- Marsh: “It won’t shy away from the controversies that have dogged Glassman and the company since the beginning, and will offer a fair and accurate account of this sport’s incredible history.”
- Anyone who has a relevant story to tell can reach out to Marsh directly.
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