The Death of a CrossFit Athlete

A 2013 study in the Journal of Strength and Conditioning Research reported that CrossFit, while intense, is not particularly dangerous and is considered to be as risky as weight training or preparing for a triathlon. Lazar Ðukić was a 28-year-old CrossFit athlete from Serbia who was a particularly strong swimmer. So why, then, did he drown during an 800-meter swim as part of the 2024 CrossFit Games in Fort Worth, Texas? For Rolling Stone, Calum Marsh reports on what went wrong, and CrossFit’s ham-fisted response.

As the athletes gathered in the recovery area nearly an hour after the start time, cooling down in ice baths, Luka and Pantovic hurried from person to person, asking whether anyone had seen Ðukić. No one had. Some thought maybe he had retreated to the parking lot after a disappointing performance. Others heard rumors — no one knew where they began — that he’d swum off course and had been found on a different shore. CrossFit staff only seemed to add to the sense of confusion. Shorunke remembers a staffer telling Luka that the team had eyes on Ðukić, and that his chip timer passed the finish line.

They didn’t, and it had not. Yet Castro himself told Luka, around this time, not to worry: “We’ve found him,” he said. Shorunke, who overheard these remarks, was mystified by the air of certainty. They were insisting they had found the man. “But they hadn’t,” he says. “They hadn’t found him.”