'I made the wrong decision,' Hyrox athlete who soiled herself in race tells BBC

Australian Hyrox athlete Joanna Wietrzyk says she made the wrong decision when she continued to race after soiling herself during a competition in Beijing.

Speaking exclusively to the BBC, she suggested her determination to win the race in September had clouded her judgement.

Roughly halfway through her event last month, Wietrzyk suffered a bout of diarrhoea and images of faecal matter on parts of her body were widely shared online.

“I didn’t really think about those around me… the decision that I made in hindsight was the wrong decision and I’m truly sorry for everyone that I did affect,” the athlete told the BBC.

She also talked about the effect of the social media reaction after the incident, saying she should not have received “such backlash”, and that she is “only human”.

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