‘He was there, then he was gone.’ Lazar Ðukić was one of the stronger swimmers. The 28-year-old Serbian had just rattled off a 3.5-mile run in the dry heat of an early Texan morning, before tearing into an 800m open-water swim that marked the first event of the 2024 CrossFit Games. With three consecutive top-10 finishes in the previous three seasons, he was among the favourites, and well positioned with barely 50m to go.

‘Lazar was my pick for the event win,’ former Games athlete David Shorunke later recalled, expecting to greet his victorious friend at the finish line. Instead, he found Lazar’s partner Anja in tears. His brother, Luka, demanding answers. Frantic spectators yelling that they saw an athlete ‘go under’. They shouted for help.

Rudy Trevino, a former lifeguard trained in deep, open-water rescue, was another eyewitness. ‘There are classic signs that you’re taught to look for,’ he later told CrossFit news site BarBend. ‘Lazar had them all: head tilted back, eyes wide open, bobbing motion.’ (Men’s Health put his account to CrossFit, but they didn’t respond.) ‘They said it was being handled, but it wasn’t,’ Trevino said. ‘He was there, then he was gone.’

Confusion turned to panic. Shorunke and fellow athletes joined the search but found the water ‘too deep and too dark to see anything’. Emergency services arrived. Police divers cleared the scene. Roughly 30 minutes later, they recovered a body.

‘The first instinct is to shut down. To isolate. To mourn,’ CrossFit Games wrote on X, having suspended the day’s events. ‘But the only cure for grief is to grieve. And the best way to grieve is together.’

On Friday 9 August, less than 24 hours after the event’s first fatality in its near 20-year history, the Games resumed.

Three months on, Shorunke is reluctant to be drawn on the details. ‘To be honest, I’d rather not go over the specifics,’ he tells MH via video call from his home in Växjö, Sweden. One of Britain’s finest male CrossFitters, the three-time Games athlete (2016, 2020, 2023) prefers to remember happier times.

‘First, he was a very nice guy, very open, very warm,’ he says, with the anguish written across his features slowly fading. ‘He was a very fierce competitor. The way he would behave would force you to smile. And the trash talk was incessant, it didn’t matter if he was in first place or 30th. He really did represent the best values of an athlete.’

Shorunke says he and fellow athletes were told to decide whether or not to continue the competition, barely three hours after Lazar’s body was recovered. ‘I didn’t know it at the time, but I was probably in shock. You’re not mentally able to make a decision like that and nor should we have been made to.’

Then, after a pause: ‘What happened would be a loss, whoever it was, but for it to have happened to him is an incredible loss. For the sport and for our community.’

A jet ski pulls in buoys in Fort Worth, Texas, following the fatal swim-run event.

While Ðukić’s death has left a scar on the sport, the silence from CrossFit Inc has left a vacuum. ‘We’ve had very little communication from them,’ Canadian athlete Brent Fikowski replies when asked how the event’s organisers had responded to three demands laid out by the Professional Fitness Athletes’ Association (PFAA) in the days that followed.

In his role as president of the PFAA, Fikowski – a nine-time Games competitor, an icon of the sport and another human seemingly hewn from granite by this intoxicating sport – had called for:

• Transparency around the investigation of Đukić’s death.
• The formation of a new independent safety team.
• The resignation of Dave Castro from his role on the CrossFit sport team.

While CrossFit was founded by Greg Glassman (also its former CEO), former Navy Seal Castro was the architect of the sport’s mass appeal. As director of the CrossFit Games, he devised the workouts and choreographed the live-streamed announcements for the worldwide Open, the first event of the season.

In a public Instagram post following Lazar’s death, Castro apologised to Ðukić’s family for implying that they had backed CrossFit’s decision to continue with the Games. ‘I’ve never been in a situation like this before and I absolutely made a mistake,’ he wrote. ‘I sincerely regret any pain I’ve caused.’ Still, according to Shorunke, CrossFit’s ‘disrespectful’ behaviour on that fateful day cemented deep divisions and distrust between the sport’s chief protagonists, its athletes and its figurehead.

British athlete David Shorunke was at Marine Creek Lake the day Luka Đukić died.

One hundred and four days later – after the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office ruled the official cause of death to be drowning – CrossFit finally broke its silence.

The company announced it had concluded its third-party investigation but that it would not be publishing the report ‘based on privacy and legal considerations’. Instead, the statement read, CrossFit was focusing on moving forwards ‘with actions that maximise our continued commitment to safety at the CrossFit Games’.

This included intentions to suspend all open-water events at the Games, to create a safety advisory board, to integrate mental health professionals into its on-site medical teams, to establish a CrossFit Athlete Council, and to hire a new senior safety leader who would report jointly to Castro, ‘who will continue to lead CrossFit’s Sport Organisation’, and to CrossFit CEO Don Faul.

‘We are confident these adjustments will enhance our ability to respond swiftly and effectively in any situation while fostering a safer environment for all athletes and event participants,’ the statement read. It went down like an aborted 100kg snatch.

‘Disappointed’ and ‘dissatisfied’ is how the PFAA responded, adding that it would support any athletes who choose to ‘veto’ the Games and ‘explore alternative competition routes’.

Brent Fikowski is a a nine-time Games competitor and president of the Professional Fitness Athletes’ Association (PFAA).

Shorunke’s reaction is similarly unambiguous. ‘What happened at the CrossFit Games was not a single, isolated event,’ he says. ‘It was the product of years of CrossFit refusing to prioritise athlete safety, refusing to communicate with athletes, refusing to communicate with the PFAA, refusing to be transparent.’ (CrossFit is yet to respond.)

Up to that point, he says, most athletes have simply ‘bitten our tongues’ for fear of being ostracised from a sport that’s in their DNA. ‘We love competing so much that whatever they’ve fed us, we’ve swallowed.’ But now, he insists, a line has been drawn.

This is not the first time the company has found itself in conflict with its community. In 2020, Alyssa Royse, owner of Rocket Community Fitness in Seattle, called out what she perceived to be CrossFit’s rudderless leadership in the midst of Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement.

Glassman’s inflammatory response – in which he seemingly belittled the pandemic and death of George Floyd, writing ‘FLOYD-19’ on Twitter – triggered nearly 500 CrossFit boxes to de-affiliate overnight. In a later social media post, Glassman apologised for the tweet, saying, ‘I, CrossFit HQ, and the CrossFit community will not stand for racism. I made a mistake by the words I chose yesterday… It was a mistake, not racist but a mistake.’

Then there was the time when EMOMs and AMRAPs were blamed for causing rhabdomyolysis (a condition in which muscles break down or leak their contents into the bloodstream), prompting sections of CrossFit’s hierarchy to don ‘rhabdo’ T-shirts like a badge of honour.

This was when the Games was still trying to legitimise itself as a pursuit worthy of global brand sponsorship. But a big part of CrossFit’s appeal was its counter-culture origins – its reluctance to conform with the Globo Gym status quo.

Greg Glassman is the founder of CrossFit. He stepped down from his position as CEO in 2020.

‘I was covering CrossFit when it was being streamed on mainstream media like this freak sideshow fitness event,’ remembers Justin LoFranco, founder of dedicated CrossFit newsletter Morning Chalk Up. CrossFit has always done things its way, he says. ‘They don’t show a lot of emotion… They can be tough to deal with.’

LoFranco compares the organisation to ‘a street fighter that’s come up and has had to struggle against everyone else that didn’t want him there, didn’t think he was worthy, and really had to fight his way to the top. Then he finally gets his title shot and he’s like, “F*** you guys.”’

Yet, at the same time, he says, the CrossFit community is like a big teddy bear welcoming you inside with arms wide open. And, he adds, if there was an award for someone who has done more to transform fitness worldwide in the past 20 years, it should be given to Glassman.

‘Controversial figure, sure,’ he says. ‘But you cannot deny that [CrossFit] has had a tremendous effect on the very industry that scorned him.’

CrossFit’s refusal to play by the rules might have endeared the sport to its early adopters – the kind who trained like a demon, ate like a caveman and sneered at the prima donnas on the football pitch.

But for the likes of perennial Games athlete Fikowski, with a background in professional volleyball, the organisers’ apparent disregard for regulation, a clearly defined season or even a willingness to work with athletes to ensure safety was a schtick that got very old quickly.

‘I always pushed myself to the limit,’ the athlete tells MH, speaking the day after a podium finish in Aberdeen at the sixth annual Rogue Invitational, which marked his retirement from the sport. ‘I think that’s the expectation. That’s what fans want to see. That’s what I came here to do,’ he says.

‘We always thought that we could go hard and we’d be safe, and if we fell, they would save us, they would protect us. That’s the contract. That’s the agreement, right?’ In Fort Worth, however, all trust was broken.

Now, with his focus on the PFAA, Fikowski is determined to usher in better safeguards for functional fitness athletes, whether competing under the banner of CrossFit or not.

CrossFit’s repeated missteps are all the more glaring when set against the rapid growth of rival functional fitness events. Every year, Games qualifying meets, such as the Rogue Invitational, are gaining ground, and fitness festival Wodapalooza is booming, while at pro and grassroots level, Hyrox is setting the pace.

Having ridden out the pandemic, the ‘world’s largest mass-participation fitness race’ is enjoying explosive treble-digit growth, from 650 participants competing in Hamburg in 2017 to more than 335,000 Hyrox participants across 63 races over the last year to date.

By comparison, 344,396 registered for last year’s CrossFit Open, up 6.7% on 2023, yet 20.5% down on its peak in 2018, when 415,000 signed up. Last year’s numbers also masked dips in participation among teenagers (-2.5%) and men aged between 18 and 34 (-0.2%). Even more concerning for the sport’s long-term prognosis is that around 30% of those who registered for the 2023 Open opted not to return 12 months later.

Mikaela Norman is a prime example. Like Shorunke and Fikowski, she played high-level sport, got injured, found CrossFit and fell in love. ‘I’m a super-competitive person so I really needed something to compete in. When I started [CrossFit], Hyrox wasn’t even a sport, but it has grown massively,’ she tells MH, shortly after wrapping up her latest Hyrox race in Hong Kong.

Having competed at the pinnacle of CrossFit, finishing 16th in the team division at the 2022 Games in Madison, Wisconsin, the Swedish athlete decided to give Hyrox a go. ‘I was like, “Yeah, whatever. This could be fun.” So I went to Hamburg and broke the world record [with a time of 1:00:45].’ She hasn’t looked back since.

Mikaela Norman is one of many CrossFit athletes who have switched to Hyrox in recent years.

Khan Porter, Sam Briggs, Ricky Garard and Hunter McIntyre have also followed this now well-trodden path. Significantly, seven-time Fittest Woman on Earth Tia-Clair Toomey-Orr has thrown her hat in the ring, too, joining forces with James Newbury to finish third in the mixed doubles at Hyrox Melbourne in December – something Norman says could have a ripple effect for amateur athletes who want to follow in the footsteps of the Games’ greats.

As for Norman, rather than becoming disillusioned with CrossFit, she says she simply transitioned away from the sport because it was becoming too heavy and too technical for her specific skill set. Hyrox resembles the parts of CrossFit she’s always excelled at, she says. ‘I like the most grinding, endurance parts of CrossFit. Take away all the skills and use pure grind work and work capacity. That’s my cup of tea.’ Norman hasn’t ruled out returning to the CrossFit fold one day, but right now her future lies in the Roxzone.

While Toomey-Orr’s decision to enter the Hyrox fray is likely motivated by fun rather than a pointed rebuke to the Games (given there is no pro division for the mixed doubles event), it feels indicative of a broader moment, in which elite CrossFitters are taking a step back to survey their options.

‘I think it has been a process,’ Norman says, adding that the shift was already happening long before the tragedy at Fort Worth. ‘But maybe the people who were interested in Hyrox were disappointed with how CrossFit handled things,’ – and as a result it made their decision easier.

So is CrossFit entering terminal decline? Norman isn’t so sure. ‘If they really mess up, then I think we might see bigger changes,’ she says. ‘But this upcoming year will be very important. If CrossFit can show they are actually willing to change and get people’s trust back, then it will continue to grow for sure.’

CrossFit Inc, meanwhile, has remained tight-lipped. The company has refused multiple approaches from Men’s Health, instead pointing us towards its public statements.

For a sport that emerged from humble backyard beginnings in 2001 to bask in the warm Netflix-documentary glow at its zenith, the next 25 years are looking uncertain. At the time of writing, the 2025 CrossFit Open and Games are going ahead as planned, with the introduction of a new Community Cup allowing ‘local athletes to compete against their peers based on their level earned during the Open’. Meanwhile rumours that the sport’s biggest names will boycott the Games are rumbling. A recent survey by barbend.com found that 25% of elite athletes are ‘likely’ or ‘very likely’ to skip the next season. And, hints Shorunke, an athlete-centric spin-off is in the works.

‘The first year it comes out, it’s probably not going to be as good as it could be because it’s fresh and new and young. But if we get behind it and really try to make it work as a community, it could be something brilliant.’

Unencumbered by the organisation, he adds, there’s no reason why the sport can’t go from strength to strength. ‘The thing I enjoy about CrossFit is the training methodology, the community, the competition, being around other athletes, the coaches, the events themselves… and I don’t see why any of those things have to end because CrossFit as a brand is not fit to deliver the season and leadership that they should.’

While the community might be willing to move on and forgive, it’s unlikely anyone will ever forget. ‘In Lazar, I had everything. He was my brother, my best friend, my idol,’ Luka Đukić wrote on Instagram in the aftermath of the Games.

‘On Thursday 8 August, I lost all of it. My brother loved this sport and he was one of the best in the world at it… but he was also one of the best people out there with a heart bigger than a mountain.’ That, he added, is how he should be remembered.

Sam Rider is an experienced health and fitness journalist, author and REPS Level 3 qualified personal trainer. Having covered – and coached in – the industry since 2011, he’s road tested every workout concept, training accessory and diet plan you could dream of, while quizzing titans of the industry and reporting on the physical and mental exploits of Olympic athletes, World Cup winners and CrossFit Games champs. In 2016, in the name of science, he underwent a clean bulking transformation, packing on 10kg of lean mass in 10 weeks, before promptly dropping 10kg in two weeks after tearing his ACL on the football pitch.Sam graduated from the University of Leeds with a degree in History and completed his NCTJ Diploma in Journalism at News Associates in Manchester.