Athlete’s death raises safety concerns as CrossFit Games resume
Several horrified spectators shouted for lifeguards from the shores of Marine Creek Lake in Fort Worth on Thursday morning as a competitor appeared to struggle before slipping underwater close to the end of the swim event at this year’s international CrossFit Games.
Cole Learn, a CrossFit athlete from Ontario, Canada, told The Washington Post he watched a lifeguard on a paddleboard move to where spectators had last seen 28-year-old Lazar Dukic of Serbia, then immediately paddle back.
“Once I realized the lifeguard didn’t see him go under, I knew there was nothing we could do,” he said. “The lifeguards weren’t paying attention to the swimmers - they were watching whoever was coming out of the water.”
Dukic never made it to the finish line. Fort Worth Fire Department officials said they received a call at about 8 a.m. that a competitor was missing, and divers found Dukic’s body an hour after they entered the water. Although his cause of death has not been released, the incident prompted questions about whether event organizers had adequate safeguards in place to protect the roughly 80 participants in the grueling multiday competition. CrossFit chief executive Don Faul said Friday that the organization initiated an investigation into Dukic’s death, which Faul said will include an independent third-party review.
“After speaking with the Dukic family and other athletes, we made the decision to move forward with the 2024 CrossFit Games, dedicated to Lazar Dukic,” Faul said in a statement. “CrossFit’s paramount consideration is the safety of our community, and there are rigorous safety measures in place for each event.”
Some of the questions about the game’s safety precautions concern CrossFit’s decision to have athletes begin Thursday at 7 a.m. with a 3.5-mile run before tackling the half-mile swim. Experts told The Post that other multisport endurance events with a swimming component, such as triathlons, generally have athletes begin in the water, based on the notion that it’s safest to swim when entrants are least fatigued.
CrossFit did not respond to a request for comment Saturday seeking more information about the safety measures. Faul said at a news conference Thursday that CrossFit had a “fully planned and documented safety plan” in place, but did not provide additional details, saying those “will be part of the information that’s to come as part of the investigation.”
The CrossFit Games is an annual competition in which participants vie for the title of “Fittest on Earth” in a program that includes running, swimming, weightlifting and gymnastics. The competition - which has gained popularity through ESPN’s broadcasting - is similar to a decathlon, only with a dozen separate events.
Ben Williams, a triathlon coach and owner of the Hawaii Triathlon Center, said he had never seen a swimmer drown at the end of a race in the 20 years he’s been participating in and organizing competitions. At the triathlons he’s been involved with, he added, he will sometimes hire enough lifeguards for there to be a one-to-one ratio of rescue personnel to athletes.
“It’s important for the organizers to communicate the level of difficulty and risks involved in the race,” he said. “You’re in a wild environment so you don’t have complete control but you have to mitigate it the best you can.”
Williams said he agreed with the decision to continue with the games.
“It’s a tragedy that this happened,” Williams said. “But I think it’s important to not cancel the event, and instead let’s review what happened and change our procedures so it won’t happen again.”
Will Murray, a triathlete and certified Level 1 coach through USA Triathlon, the event’s national governing body, was struck by the decision to have athletes complete a run before they swam. In triathlons, the swimming portion “almost always” comes first, he said.
One reason to place a swimming event first is to avoid the potential for cramping or cardiac distress that even fit athletes can experience when they plunge their bodies, hot from sun and exertion, into cool water, Murray said.
“You see it on TV in football games when they dump the ice water on the coach’s neck - they instantly lock up,” Murray said.
Despite the potential risks, Murray called water deaths in multisport competitions “exceedingly rare.” If cramping or exhaustion overtakes a competitor, adequate swim support can usually handle the situation, such as people on paddle boards who can quickly get a struggling swimmer to shore or throw them a buoy.
Kaitlin Pritchard, a spectator, told the Fort Worth Star-Telegram that she was by the finish line at the swimming event when she saw Dukic approach, among the first group of swimmers reaching the shore. His name, she told the outlet, was called over the loudspeaker along with other athletes nearing the finish line.
But Dukic, Pritchard told the Star-Telegram, was one of the several athletes she noticed were struggling from fatigue.
“It’s all hindsight now, because you didn’t know what was going on at the time,” she said, according to the outlet. “There wasn’t that immediate notification of, oh, someone was missing. I mean, people were still swimming over him, you know, where he went down.”
Pritchard said she saw people she assumed were lifeguards on paddleboards on the lake, but didn’t see any of them attempt a rescue. Based on where the paddleboarders were positioned, Dukic “should have been reachable,” Pritchard said.
Learn, the Canadian spectator, said he was not sure whether the lifeguard his group was calling out to “didn’t understand us” or “didn’t take it seriously.”
He felt heartbroken watching the water, hoping Dukic would come up for air.
“Every athlete knows there’s always risk of injury when they sign up for an event,” he said. “I don’t think any athlete signs up for a competition thinking that they can die.”
Related Content
The world’s priciest drug may save lives. Can kids get it in time?
