By Streisand Neto
LONDON, Oct 23 (Reuters) - Global indoor fitness race company Hyrox is teaming up with new player Xenom to expand participation and maybe one day even be accepted into the Olympics, the companies' executives say.
Hyrox, founded in Hamburg, Germany, in 2017, and Xenom, a CrossFit-inspired platform founded in 2026, announced a strategic partnership earlier this month to work together on marketing, events and education.
The founders of Hyrox, Olympic gold medallist Moritz Fuerste and
entrepreneur Christian Toetzke, have invested in Xenom, the latter company said in its announcement, without giving any financial details.
Their shared goal, it said, was "making fitness the largest sport on earth."
Hyrox joins a board that includes US investment firm WndrCo founded by former Walt Disney Studios Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg and former Dropbox CFO Sujay Jaswa, who led Xenom's $15 million seed round.
“It made a lot of sense to us, the partnership. We exist in separate but connected markets on the same spectrum of fitness and we see a future where people will move around that spectrum," Xenom CEO Keith Barlow told Reuters.
A Xenom competition involves athletes participating in 10 fixed standardised events across two days.
That is similar to Hyrox's standard fixed eight-event format which combines running and functional workouts, offering participants four different racing categories.
Mass-participation fitness events are increasingly popular.
“We're planning to end up somewhere at 2.2 million participants for this running season. 2.5-ish for the calendar year (20)27,” Fuerste, a former German hockey player, told Reuters about Hyrox.
FITNESS AT THE OLYMPICS?
Xenom, which held its inaugural event Dallas, Texas, in June followed by an event in London, has seen early growth.
“We had just over 400 athletes in Dallas and we had 560-ish in London. So about 30% growth on the first two events and then coming into Miami, we've got really high expectations,” Barlow said, as Xenom prepares for its Miami event in December and then its first full international season in 2027 opening in Malaga.
As Hyrox continues to attract more participants across the world, so does its expansion ambitions.
With over 100 events in cities including London and Rio de Janeiro, Fuerste wants to enlarge Hyrox’s footprint in Latin America. “I think probably South America is a region where we can grow. Apart from Argentina, Brazil, then middle America, Mexico. There is a little bit more room to grow there.”
Hyrox would also love to see fitness become an Olympic discipline – possibly by Brisbane 2032.
"That's the big goal and the aspiration that we have. And we are working on the technicalities behind that …. Is it super likely? I don't know,” said Fuerste.
(Reporting by Streisand Neto; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
