The first Grand Slam in HYROX history
Some performances redefine what's possible in a sport. Joanna Wietrzyk's run at Warsaw on May 24, 2026 is one of them.
By winning the HYROX Warsaw Major in 54:25, the Polish athlete didn't just break the world record. She became the first athlete in HYROX history to win all four Majors in a single season — a feat now being called the HYROX Grand Slam.
To put that in context: since the HYROX circuit launched, no one had ever won every Major in a full season. Wietrzyk just did it. And she did it while setting a new world record at the same time.
A world record cut by 98 seconds
The previous women's individual world record already belonged to Joanna Wietrzyk — a 56:03 she set at the Phoenix Major in February 2026. That was already a jaw-dropping time, comfortably below the symbolic 57-minute mark.
In Warsaw, she ran 54:25.
That's 98 seconds faster than her own world record, in the space of three months. In a discipline as demanding as HYROX — 8km of running split across 8 functional workout stations — cutting a world record by a minute and a half isn't incremental improvement. It's a step change.
A race fought to the wire
Wietrzyk's victory was no walkover. She had to battle two elite opponents throughout the race.
Lauren Weeks — three-time world champion — was there. So was Alyssa McElheny, making her Elite 15 debut. The lead changed hands multiple times. The PGE Narodowy Stadium in Warsaw — Wietrzyk's home city — was electric.
Under that kind of pressure, in front of her home crowd, against the best athletes on the circuit, Wietrzyk produced the fastest time in the sport's history.
Stockholm is next
The 2026 HYROX World Championships head to Stockholm. Wietrzyk arrives as world record holder, first-ever Grand Slam champion, and the heavy favourite.
HYROX is still a young sport writing its first chapters of greatness. With this 2025/26 season, Joanna Wietrzyk just wrote one of them.
Sources: BOXROX, PUMA Media Hub