Cover Before the first wave even crosses the start line, the enthusiasm the AsiaWorld-Expo venue for Hyrox 2026 in Hong Kong signals the shift from a niche workout to a mass-participation festival. The scale represents a 2,600% increase in attendance since the sport first landed in the city four years ago. (Photo: Hyrox APAC)
Before the first wave even crosses the start line, the enthusiasm the AsiaWorld-Expo venue for Hyrox 2026 in Hong Kong signals the shift from a niche workout to a mass-participation festival. The scale represents a 2,600% increase in attendance since the sport first landed in the city four years ago. (Photo: Hyrox APAC)
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In 2022, Hyrox was a niche race for 700 athletes in an intimate hall. This past weekend, as 19,500 people transformed AsiaWorld-Expo into a record-breaking phenomenon, original champion and race emcee Pete Laverick witnessed a sport evolving beyond the leaderboard. This is the inside story of how a global movement found its emotional heartbeat in the heart of Asia.
In 2022, I lined up at the first ever Hyrox event in Hong Kong and won the men’s doubles. The venue felt intimate. There were 700 of us, the kind of crowd where you could hear individual conversations between workout stations. It felt like something new and slightly underground, a fitness race that hadn’t quite found its audience yet.
This past weekend, I was back at AsiaWorld-Expo, this time on the microphone as race emcee. The venue was unrecognisable. Physically, and in every other sense. The noise, the density, the energy radiating off 19,500 athletes from more than 60 countries. At one point on Sunday, Mother’s Day, I looked out from the stand and saw families packed into the spectator stands, children on shoulders, people cheering strangers through their final wall ball set with the kind of investment you’d normally reserve for someone you love. Most of them had never competed. Many never would. They were just there because this is where they wanted to be.
That moment told me something the numbers had been quietly suggesting for years. Hyrox is no longer just a race. It’s a festival.
700 to 19,500: the numbers don’t lie
Above A female athlete leaning low to push a heavy metal Hyrox sled, which is uniquely loaded with stacked traditional bamboo dim sum steaming baskets
A female athlete leaning low to push a heavy metal Hyrox sled, which is uniquely loaded with stacked traditional bamboo dim sum steaming baskets
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The growth curve in Hong Kong alone is staggering. From 700 racers in 2022, the event tripled to around 3,000 in 2023. By 2024, the city was hosting the first-ever Hyrox Open Asian Championship with over 6,500 participants. Last year: close to 10,000. This weekend: 19,500, more than double last year’s turnout, breaking the record that Bangkok had only just set a few months earlier.
I’ve watched every one of those editions. What’s changed isn’t just the headcount. It’s the composition of the crowd. In the early years, almost everyone in the building was a competitor. Now, you feel the shift the moment you walk in. The spectator area buzzing before the first wave has even started, people arriving in groups with no race markings, settling in for the day like they’re at a sporting event rather than participating in one. Because increasingly, that’s exactly what it is.
Above Now the voice of the arena, Pete Laverick anchors a weekend where the crowd's energy has scaled from intimate gym-talk to a stadium-level roar. His transition from racer to emcee mirrors the sport’s move from an underground workout to a choreographed spectator event. (Photo: Hyrox APAC)
Now the voice of the arena, Pete Laverick anchors a weekend where the crowd's energy has scaled from intimate gym-talk to a stadium-level roar. His transition from racer to emcee mirrors the sport’s move from an underground workout to a choreographed spectator event. (Photo: Hyrox APAC)
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Hyrox doesn’t end at the finish line
This year’s Hong Kong event marked the debut of Hyrox House, a festival-style space running alongside the competition all weekend, with curated food and drinks, live DJ sets, a recovery zone, and space to simply hang out. In theory, it’s an amenity. In practice, it’s a statement of intent.
I’ve been to enough Hyrox events to know that the atmosphere after the racing finishes has always had an energy to it, that particular mix of exhaustion and elation that turns strangers into friends quickly. But this weekend was different. Athletes who’d finished their race on Friday were still there on Saturday, not because they were competing again (although some of them were), but because they genuinely didn’t want to leave. I watched people who’d pushed a sled, rowed 1,000 metres and done 100 wall balls dancing next to people who’d spent the day watching. Nobody looked out of place. That’s the thing about a festival — the line between performer and audience was never really the point.
The race is the anchor. The city is the bonus. The community is the reason
Having competed at Hyrox myself (open, pro, doubles), I know what the finish line feels like. The specific relief of hitting that 100th wall ball. The way your legs take a few seconds to remember what flat ground is. What Hyrox House does is extend that feeling, give it somewhere to go. You don’t have to go home. The party is already here.
Read more: The Hyrox world record that may have redefined hybrid athletics
Above Throwback: before the record-breaking crowds of 2026, Pete Laverick was part of the original 700 who defined Hyrox’s early footprint in Hong Kong. In 2022, the victory was personal and the room was quiet—a stark contrast to the 19,500-strong festival he now leads from the microphone. (Photo: Hyrox APAC)
Throwback: before the record-breaking crowds of 2026, Pete Laverick was part of the original 700 who defined Hyrox’s early footprint in Hong Kong. In 2022, the victory was personal and the room was quiet—a stark contrast to the 19,500-strong festival he now leads from the microphone. (Photo: Hyrox APAC)
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The new fitness tourist
Something else I’ve noticed across the APAC circuit: the same faces, in different cities, every few months. Bangkok. Singapore. Tokyo. Hong Kong. These are athletes who organise portions of their year around the Hyrox calendar, booking flights the way another generation booked festival tickets. The race is the anchor. The city is the bonus. The community is the reason.
This weekend, 60 countries were represented at AsiaWorld-Expo. Sixty. For a fitness race. That number would have seemed absurd to me when I was lining up at that first Hong Kong event three years ago. Now it feels like a new norm.
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Elite and everyday, side by side
One of the things I love most about calling a Hyrox event is the spectrum it holds in the same room. This weekend in Hong Kong, elite athletes were chasing World Championship qualifying times on the same floor, in the same session, as first-timers who had trained for months just to finish. As MC, my job is to make both feel equally important. The remarkable thing is that Hyrox’s format achieves that almost without trying.
There is no other sport I know of where an amateur and an elite compete in the same space, on the same equipment, measured on the same leaderboard, with a crowd that understands what both are going through, because most of that crowd has either done it or is about to. That shared context creates an atmosphere no traditional spectator sport can replicate. The cheering is louder for the person finishing last because everyone in that building knows exactly what it took to get there.
Above More than just a logistical marker, this threshold represents the gateway to a shared global standard where personal limits are tested in front of a community of thousands. In four years, this entrance has transformed from a simple check-in point into the front door of Asia’s largest fitness festival. (Photo: Hyrox APAC)
More than just a logistical marker, this threshold represents the gateway to a shared global standard where personal limits are tested in front of a community of thousands. In four years, this entrance has transformed from a simple check-in point into the front door of Asia’s largest fitness festival. (Photo: Hyrox APAC)
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Three years from now
In June, the Hyrox World Championships head to Stockholm, a multi-day event with a Fan Village, opening ceremony, and official afterparty that reads more like an Olympic programme than a fitness race schedule. That is the direction of travel, and Asia is following fast.
If Hong Kong went from 700 to 19,500 in four years, the question is not whether the next threshold gets broken. It is what breaking it looks like. Outdoor venues, multi-stage festival formats, headline acts alongside elite racing. The infrastructure is already being built. Hyrox House is the prototype.
I stood on that microphone this weekend and thought about the 700 of us who showed up in 2022 not quite knowing what we were walking into. We were early to something. We just didn’t know how big.
