HYROX World Championships Preview and 6 Athletes to Watch
From June 18 through Sunday, June 21, the world’s best HYROX athletes will descend on Strawberry Arena in Stockholm, Sweden, the host venue for the 2026 HYROX World Championships.
Remind Me
This year, there were 310 race days across 105 HYROX events worldwide, which attracted more than 1.5 million people.
The first HYROX World Championships took place in 2019 in Oberhausen, Germany, with 600 competitors.
- In Stockholm, 8,000 athletes from 98 countries will compete across 23 divisions — Elite 15, age-group Pro Singles, age-group Pro Doubles, and adaptive — in the largest World Championship to date.
We had the chance to catch up with six athletes racing in Stockholm — Tim Wenisch, Joanna Wietrzyk, Pelayo Menendez Fernandez, Jake Dearden, Camilla Massa and Hidde Weersma — and we learned that, as different as their HYROX journeys have been, they all have one thing in common: They all want to stand on the podium, preferably in first place, in Stockholm.
Tim Wenisch: Chasing Back-to-Back Titles
Wenisch’s HYROX journey began in 2018.
A former 800- and 1,500-meter runner from Germany, Wenisch, now 27, had just hung up his track spikes and was looking to train for something new.
He came across HYROX in a magazine article and decided to register for the second-ever HYROX event in Hamburg, Germany.
At the time, Wenisch was more than 30 pounds lighter than he is today, and the sled pull took him nearly 10 minutes. He finished his first race in 1 hour and 19 minutes, placing 18th overall.
- Today, almost nobody heads into Stockholm with as big a target on his back as Wenisch, who is the reigning Men’s Elite 15 Singles and Pro Doubles Elite 15 World Champion.
He admits he feels pressure, but sees it as a good thing.
- “Pressure is something that I want. It’s an honor to have pressure, and for me it’s positive. It gives me energy because it means people believe in you, so that’s pretty nice,” explained Wenisch, who was heavily involved in developing Adidas Adizero Dropset Elite shoe last year.
And just a few weeks away from the big show, Wenisch says he’s in the best shape of his career. (He has already posted two race times this season faster than his 53:53, which earned him the world title last year.)
Although he expects fierce competition in Stockholm — including from doubles partner Alexander Roncevic — he is confident he can repeat.
- “I know that when I’m in my top shape, it’s almost not possible to follow me,” he said.
Joanna Wietrzyk: Staying in Her Own Lane
If you still think the best HYROX athletes must come from a background in endurance sports, look no further than Australia’s Joanna Wietrzyk, arguably the sport’s most prominent female rising star.
The 23-year-old grew up playing tennis, and it took her less than a year and only four HYROX races to qualify as an Elite 15 HYROX athlete. Today, she is the current women’s Singles world record holder (54 minutes and 25 seconds), and she will be racing in the Elite 15 Singles and Elite 15 Doubles with partner Jess Pettrow in Stockholm.
When asked how she could be such a good runner without a running background, Wietrzyk explained that tennis is more of an endurance sport than many assume.
But still, there’s endurance, and then there’s endurance endurance, right?
Wietrzyk shrugged and chalked it up to having trained six or seven days a week her entire life in an elite environment, both on the tennis court and in the gym.
- “And when COVID hit, there was nothing else to really do, so I started running around my community, and did one marathon and really liked it,” she said, adding that the HYROX stations have actually been the harder aspect of the sport for her to master.
Today, Wietrzyk says the area she feels she can still improve upon is the burpee broad jumps, which have always been more challenging for her as a taller athlete.
- “And there are little pockets of time that I can always shave. And always in the running, I can always push that little bit harder on the run coming out of the stations, but it’s all relative to what you’re feeling that day,” she said.
As for her keys at the upcoming World Championships, Wietrzyk insists that good things will happen if she just focuses on her own race.
- “I just want to keep the consistency I have had all season. I have had a record-breaking season, and I’m obviously very, very happy with that. So I literally just need to keep the same strategy that I did in all my other races, and try to give it all I have and hopefully that’s a win, or a podium.”
She added: “But I think I just need to focus on my own racing and leave it all out there on the day.”
Pelayo Menendez Fernandez: “Gold Medal or Nothing”
Growing up in Spain, Pelayo Menendez Fernandez competed in karate and alpine skiing, then began running in college. He was heavily into triathlons for many years before signing up for his first HYROX race in 2023.
- “I have basically competed all my life,” said Menendez Fernandez, who now lives in Chicago and is the founder of Peele Performance, a company that offers programming for HYROX athletes and triathletes.
Menendez Fernandez will be racing with partner Rich Ryan — and against Wenisch and Roncevic — in the Elite 15 Men’s Doubles event at the upcoming World Championships. He is adamant he will accept nothing less than a win.
- “Gold medal or nothing,” he said.
He added: “And get the world record back.” (Menendez Fernandez and Ryan held the world record until Wenisch and Roncevic broke it).
Like Wietrzyk, one of the big keys for Menendez Fernandez will be to focus 100 percent on his own race.
- “I need to be in a tunnel-visioned mode…I don’t care what’s going on around me,” he said. “The world can be collapsing, and I won’t even realize.”
This means that, unlike most recreational HYROX racers who constantly look at their watches during a race, Menendez Fernandez will not even peek at his.
- “I’ll perform better if I don’t know,” he said.
Jake Dearden: Living the Dream Life
When the UK’s Jake Dearden signed up for his first HYROX race in 2022, he didn’t even know what it was.
At the time, he was a personal trainer at a functional fitness gym. When the gym decided to send a group to compete in a HYROX race, Dearden, now 27, decided to join.
- “I won my age group in the Open division, and from there it just kind of snowballed,” said Dearden, who said he was never really a great athlete, but prior to HYROX he dabbled with some ultramarathons “just for fun.”
Four years later, Dearden is an Elite 15 HYROX athlete who will race this weekend in the Elite 15 Doubles with Australian partner James Kelly in Stockholm.
The pair held the world record at one point, but they know the competition will be steep — Dearden listed Wenisch and Roncevic, as well as Hunter McIntyre and Jake Williamson, as the two pairs he sees as their biggest challengers — “but we hope to be up there, too,” he said.
Regardless of what happens in Stockholm, Dearden, a Puma-sponsored athlete, is adamant that HYROX has already given him more than he could have asked for.
- “If you would have asked me at 16 what my dream life would be, it would have never been this. What I’m doing right now is so much better than what I ever could have imagined,” he said.
Dearden added: “I have to pinch myself every day.”
What has been so exciting for Dearden is watching the sport grow so quickly over the last four years.
- “It’s getting more and more professional every single year, and I’m so lucky to be part of such an amazing sport,” he said.
Dearden’s long-term goal is to be the Elite 15 Singles World Champion one day, but more importantly, to continue in the sport for as long as possible.
- “I just want to continue progressing…and I want longevity in the sport. I want to be one of the top guys for the next 10 years,” he said.
And, if HYROX gets into the Olympic Games, “that would be such a dream come true, as well,” he said.
Camilla Massa: Mom, Businesswoman and Two-Time World Champion
Five years ago, Massa wasn’t doing anything for fitness.
Today, the 37-year-old is a two-time HYROX World Champion.
The Italian-born athlete, who now lives in the United States, discovered fitness in 2021, a year after giving birth to her third daughter. She started going to the gym three days a week, and soon a friend who is now her husband convinced her to try HYROX.
Massa signed up and was surprised by how much she enjoyed it.
- “I fell in love with the sport, and also with the fire I saw in the elite athletes,” said Massa, who owns and runs her own post-production fashion business along with her friend in Italy.
Despite the time-consuming demands of running a business and being a mother, Massa makes time to train twice a day and is racing in the Pro Women’s 35-39-year-old category in Stockholm.
Her goal is simple: “To win for the third time,” she said.
That said, for Massa, the fact that she is even on this journey matters more.
- “I feel very lucky. The sport is very accessible, and it gave me an opportunity to be a dreamer. I don’t think I could have done this in any other sport,” Massa said.
She added: “I was just a mother, and now I’m an elite athlete. It’s not something I expected. It’s not something I ever could have imagined.”
Hidde Weersma: From Racing in Walking Shoes to the World Stage
The Netherlands’ Hidde Weersma first encountered HYROX on Instagram in 2021.
- “I was scrolling and got an ad saying that HYROX, the fitness race, is coming to the Netherlands. I had never heard of it before, but I was intrigued and clicked on it and saw that it was running and eight stations in between,” said Weersma, who grew up doing track and field and soccer.
He added: “And because I had been doing triathlons and a little bit of strength training on the side, I thought I might be able to pull it off. So I registered for that first race in Amsterdam.”
Weersma, who will race in the Elite 15 Singles and Elite 15 Doubles with partner Thierry Willigenburg this weekend, remembers his first HYROX race well.
- “I couldn’t find any information about how to train for HYROX, or what shoes to wear, so I did my first race in walking shoes and had blisters all over my feet,” he said, laughing.
He added: “There were only 500 participants over just one day…and there was actually room on the running course.”
Like Dearden, Weersma sometimes can’t believe how much the sport has grown in just five years, but he couldn’t be happier about it.
Heading into the World Championships, Weersma admits he isn’t 100 percent sure what to expect because he has been sick in recent days.
- “Realistically, I’m not going to be in my top top shape, but I still want to go out hard. If I’m not able to win it, I still want to give it my all, and I’ll be happy whatever the result,” he said.
Weersma added: “But for me, the top five is [still] the bare minimum, and podium, I would be very happy, and if I could win, I would be really happy.”
The Big Picture
Wenisch, Wietrzyk, Menendez Fernandez, Dearden, Massa, and Weersma highlight what makes HYROX so exciting: there is no single path to success.
As HYROX continues to evolve, it will be interesting to see whether a dominant athlete profile eventually emerges or whether the sport’s greatest strength will remain its ability to offer opportunities to people from all walks of life.
The one thing that is clear is that HYROX is very much still on the rise.
- They expect to see record spectator attendance in Stockholm, as well, way up from the 6,000 spectator tickets they sold last year at the World Championships in Chicago; they have already announced 54 new HYROX events for the rest of 2026 and 2027, and are anticipating more than two million racers.
Where will HYROX be in another five years? We’ll have to wait and see, but right now the runway looks infinite.
