The weekend saw HYROX events taking place in Washington DC, Athens, Acapulco and Tenerife, here’s what went down.
New Kids – Same as the Old Kids?
2024 World Champion Meg Jacoby returned with a dominant win in Athens, giving the whole E15 reason to start looking over their shoulders. This is only her third qualifying score but she is now a perfect 315 points from three races. She has points to defend in October & November but December’s E15 race in London is within reach if she’s able to get the races in.
Remember Jake Dearden, the singles athlete? Some people thought he was pivoting to Doubles. But no, after some injury challenges last year he won the Pro Singles in Tenerife ahead of a stacked field, to put himself within reach of the Challenger division. Tomas Tvrdik (ranked #11) finished second, and he needed the points as he’s got 105 coming off his total before the next major and wants to secure his place in the E15 race in Hamburg.
Graham Halliday had been a singles Elite fixture until recently, and he restamped his authority by winning ahead of the likes of Liam Mccroary, Gregory Pereira, Joao Almeida and Gustav Cordua in Athens. Graham is now ranked in the 20s so will likely race in the Challenger division in Hamburg at worst.
2. It’s Good That Times Don’t Matter Any More
DC saw six of the top 10 athletes finish with PBs and four of them shaved between 2:18 and 3:19 off their previous bests. Meanwhile in aircon-less Tenerife, the Spanish summer does more than just linger, it sits around your ankles in puddles of other people’s sweat, and the BBJ matting should have been cordoned off by Disease Control. None of the top athletes came within minutes of their PB. Rough sled lanes were a problem for some people again, as they were in Malaga in April.
It was a similar story in Acapulco where Canadian Ryan Douglas swam his way to a 1:00:59 including 5 minutes at the wall balls. An authoritative win nonetheless.
Athens was the one venue at the weekend where times seemed – broadly speaking – in line with athletes’ histories. Exhibit A: 10th place Julian Kreutzer’s last three finishing times are 58:17, 58:18, and 58:19 in Athens!
3. Carnage in the Doubles Divisions
Since Hyrox mandated that all doubles pairs be from the same country (boo!), many of last season’s favourite pairings have been retired and close working relationships have ended. But some scary new and newish partnerships are already emerging. Cole Learn and Frederic Dubé won DC in a dominant 48:03 while on the women’s side, a resurgent Lauren Griffith paired with Sydney Wells to win comfortably in 56:00 and put themselves back into a 6-way points tie for 8th in the rankings.
In Athens, Cem tur Burg and Maarten Enthoven were 80 seconds ahead of the field in 49:29, putting a marker down for the rest of the season. German pair Seka Arning & Stefanie Oswald’s 53:55 sees them two for two in wins from their first two races together, after debuting in Istanbul last month.
In Tenerife, Jake Williamson & Luke Greer’s have followed the same pattern: second outing, second win after their debut victory in Istanbul. And like Arning & Oswald they’re one win from being top half the E15 having only teamed up after last season’s Worlds.
It’s going to be a while before we know what’s going on in the Men’s Doubles division. Not least because the current #1 pairing is no longer a pairing. Ollie Russell has the unique and impressive status of sitting both 1st and 10th. He sits 1st with Charlie Botterill, who’s now with Jake Dearden, and 10th with Travis Owles – his new partner.
I was hoping Hyrox would relent enough to allow same-language pairs, so that German Tim Wenisch could stay with Austrian Alex Roncevic for their unique World Singles Champions pairing.
Notable Points from The Weekend
Vivian Tafuto shoots from 17th all the way up to 5th, jumping from 517.1 to 530 points.
Meg Jacoby: 210 to 315 points.
Paul Weindl was set to jump into the Challenger division with an overall win in Athens. He led into the wall balls but was forced to retire through back injury, which opened the door to Halliday’s valuable win.
Melanie Maurer goes from 512.11 to 520 with her win in Tenerife, and Rachael Wade’s 2nd in DC takes her from 517.21 to 520. They join Jess Petrow, Seka Arning and Annie Emilsson in a four-way tie for positions 12 through 16. The Strength of Field tiebreaker will determine who sits in the final E15 positions.*
Saskia Millard would have hoped for top two in Athens rather than 3rd, but her fifth qualifying score puts her in 18th position on 512.84. Possibly enough for a roll-down at the Hamburg E15 depending on races over the next few weeks. And well-positioned to fight for the Challenger division race.
Lauren Weeks’s win is notable in part for how it doesn’t help – all her qualifying points are from finishing on the podium in Elite races that offer more than the 105 awarded to winners of standard events. But this does mean she has a buffer zone in case events don’t go her way in the next few months.
As things stand, to make the Elite15 you need to have four race victories and a second to qualify…just. Or in the case of women, you need a decent strength of field score, too. As the depth of field improves over the coming months and years I’d expect that threshold to come down, as outright wins will be harder to come by. But for this season, and with results staying on your record for 12 months, it’s likely to stay roughly at 520.
Next weekend is relatively quiet with just one race (Beijing), but then we have four-in-one the week after: Maastricht, Rome, Salt Lake City and Mumbai.
For way-too-early 2027 World Championships predictions check out this podcast from myself and Jude Reynolds in the Hybrid Fitness Report:
*Strength of Field is simply the combined total of all the Elite points of everyone in your overall race. For example, if you had 400 points and you were going up against five people who all had 500 points, in all your five qualifying races, that would be 2,900 x 5 = SOF14,500. SOF is only used as a tiebreaker – it just so happens that it may be the crucial factor for the first Elite Womens Singles of the season.
