Puma doubles down on Hyrox link, CEO sees huge future for the sport

Global sportswear giant Puma is building on its now-seven-year+ association with Hyrox, renewing and extending the partnership with the fast-expanding brand behind the World Series of Fitness Racing until 2030.

FashionNetwork.com spoke to its CEO Arthur Hoeld at a major Hyrox event in Hamburg. But first, let’s take a look at the details of its partnership.

It’s calling the extension “a powerful brand moment” and it’s easy to see why. The Hyrox community aims to “break 1.6 million” global members next year “cementing Hyrox as a global fitness phenomenon”. And let’s not forget this is a growing spectator sport too.

As part of the extension, Puma will now also serve as the exclusive title partner of the Hyrox World Championships and will coordinate a Puma x Hyrox signature event annually.

Of course, the Germany-based brand, where Hyrox is also based, will provide all the official sportswear.

It has also signed three additional elite Hyrox athletes as global brand ambassadors. 

For those not yet familiar with Hyrox, it’s an indoor functional fitness race that combines running with different functional workout stations, repeated sequentially. 

It attracted 900,000 athletes in the 2024/25 season and expects to top 100 races of various levels by 2026, becoming “a major movement in the industry by combining running and functional training into one fast-paced competition, [which] is the world’s fastest growing fitness sport”. 

And Puma saw the signs early, “recognising the great potential of this sport” since the first race in Hamburg in 2017 before becoming a global partner in 2023. 

Since then, Puma “has used the partnership as a successful platform to increase brand awareness with the sport’s many passionate participants and provide performance products that are tailored to the needs of the athletes”.

Calling the association “one of our strategically most important partnerships as a sports brand”, Arthur Hoeld noted it becomes a “great showcase for our innovative performance products… such as our combination of Nitro technology and industry-leading PumaGrip.”

He added: “Our products have proven that they support the different requirements of athletes in this very versatile sport and help them to achieve great results. We are very encouraged by the great feedback we have received from athletes and partners alike, which helps us position ourselves even stronger as a sports brand.”

Athlete roster grows

As part of the announcement at the first major event of the season in Hamburg, Puma also announced an expansion of its roster of elite Hyrox athletes. 

These include Men’s Open Doubles world record holder, Jake Williamson, Women’s Pro Doubles world record holder and Australia’s fastest female, Joanna Wietrzyk, and Hidde Weersma, the Dutch athlete who won the Men’s pro 25-29 World Championships in 2024 (he’s also the strength and conditioning coach of the the body responsible for the participation of Dutch athletes in the Olympic and Paralympic Games). 

They’re now part of a roster of more than 60 Puma athletes in the sport, including recently crowned 2025 Hyrox World Champion Linda Meier, 2024 Hyrox World Champion Megan Jacoby and three-time Hyrox World Champion and Men’s Pro world record holder Hunter McIntyre, among others.

Puma’s VP of Brand and Marketing, Richard Teyssier, added that “the continuation of this partnership reinforces Puma’s commitment to the growth of fitness racing and provides the right platform to increase our brand awareness within the Hyrox community and beyond”.

View from the top

Speaking further to Arthur Hoeld, we dug deeper to find out what’s special about Hyrox, why Puma will always be about performance sports rather than just style, and much more.

FashionNetwork.com: What is it about Hyrox that’s key for you?

Arthur Hoeld: Puma is a very dynamic brand in a very dynamic industry and celebrating the extension of the Hyrox partnerships [builds on that dynamism]. It is a great platform for us, that’s why I was very keen when I joined three months ago I asked how can we leverage [this partnership]?

FNW: It was clearly clever of Puma backing the right horse all those years ago by getting involved with Hyrox.

AH: It’s important to feel at the grass roots what’s happening, for who are the new players. For Puma it was seeing the potential of [Hyrox] becoming a global movement and being involved in that was important, not just the sport itself, but as a platform for developing new products, which [this] sport doesn’t have right now.

The sport and the competition element itself hasn’t been done before. Our industry has training products which are very static (like weightlifting) or you have running products, which we have as well and are very proud of. But the intersection between those two sports and all of its demand on the equipment, on technology, it is totally new. And we will be the ones to harness this together [with Hyrox] developing those products.

FNW: So you’re ahead of the game here? Are these new sports going to be the football and tennis of the future?

AH: Oh, yes, absolutely. In just seven years Hyrox risen from [an] idea based here in Hamburg and has become a major phenomenon that when we go to any major city right now we have the same amount of participants as the marathon — and marathons have been there for 100 years! We go to London, Berlin, New York, wherever, we command the same amount of attention by a growing group of very dedicated athletes and participants, so the potential is phenomenal. 

FNW: And it’s becoming a growing spectator sport too so that’s another avenue to tap?

AH: Absolutely. It’s broadcast on YouTube and is creating excitement and a major following around the world, but it’s only the very beginning. The dynamic that can start now is people coming to attend the games and watch them taking the broader community beyond the ever-growing active participants.

FNW: And does this have appeal beyond the male sports market?

AH: This is a very democratic unisex sport — men, women alike so I’m very keen on developing female products from the feet up. Anyone can do apparel and specifically in the German female training sector there is a lot of training apparel that has made great strides forward in the last 10 years. But if you want to crack footwear you have to be one of the established brands that can do footwear, and Puma is one of the very few that can do that. Our reputation for innovation and technology will give us a major advantage.

FNW: So how big will Hyrox association be?

AH: It will be bigger than training is nowadays but I think the potential of this new sport will be… well [he said, with a look suggesting that sky’s the limit].

FNW: Looking beyond Hyrox and more generally at Puma, some see this as a golden age for sportswear as a fashion statement. How much is the crossover to be a fashion brand as well as a sport brand important to you and Puma?

AH: [Under my watch] Puma will never be a fashion brand. Puma is and will be a sports brand. It distinguishes us and has distinguished us… rooted in traditional sports, new sports, the potential for innovation, in community-building and the excitement of sports as phenomena, that’s where we are. 

Of course, Puma has been making [style] archives over the last six or seven decades and we will continue to use that, but also match that with innovation. We are here to show serious people we are not just here for style purposes, we have authenticity and a great story to tell. But we are all about sports.

FNW: And how will you communicate that? Earlier campaigns this year for Puma centred on ‘Sporting Emotions’, will that theme continue?

AH: We’re looking at that currently but our communication and how we appear as a brand will have a significant grounding in our sport and innovation in our product. [Technical footwear brand] Nitro is an amazing platform, the technology is winning races in many, many places, but we have a significant opportunity still to tell what it is and how much it can support you as an athlete to run better, run faster. That’s what we will be talking about.

FNW: And is there plenty of upcoming tech, innovation?

AH: [We’ll be] developing further product around the Nitro platform and PumaGrip [footwear], then there will be new technology in apparel — moisture wicking and heat management — all of which are important for [Hyrox], which is predominantly done indoors and no one has really cracked the code for those things yet.

FNW: So are you close to doing that? 

Hoeld wouldn’t commit to answering that question, although he did offer a wry smile!

So it seems there could be news to come on that front. And there will be plenty of news on other subjects with an announcement on the brand elevation strategy due at the end of the month, news that the new London flagship store on Oxford Street “is progressing well” and will open before Christmas, and more store expansion announcements due later this year too.

Watch this space…