Hyrox Launches First US Youth Race in Salt Lake City This Month
- Hyrox is holding its first US race for kids, Youngstars, in Salt Lake City on September 19 and 20, open to ages 8 through 15.
- The youth race mirrors the adult Hyrox format at a smaller scale, with stations that include the SkiErg, sled push, rowing and wall balls.
- The debut arrives as national data show teenage sports participation slipping, and the race is built around finishing every station rather than ranking against anyone else.
A Starting Line Built for Kids, Not Just Their Parents
On September 19, a group of Utah kids between the ages of 8 and 15 will line up at 90 South West Temple in Salt Lake City for a race most of their parents have never entered themselves. It’s called Hyrox Youngstars, and this weekend marks its first appearance anywhere in the United States. The debut sits inside a three-day Hyrox weekend that also brings the adult race to Utah for the first time, so a state that has never hosted a single Hyrox event gets two versions of the sport at once: one for adults chasing personal records, and one built entirely around kids.
Youngstars started in London in the spring of 2024. Salt Lake City is its first American stop, with a second race planned for Anaheim, California, in December. Registration opened in April, and organizers built a free training plan into the sign-up process through the Youngstars newsletter, so families with no functional fitness background can show up prepared rather than guessing at what a wall ball or a sled push actually looks like.
How the Race Works
The format keeps the bones of adult Hyrox but scales the distance and load to fit growing bodies. Racers move through eight stations mixed with running segments, the same skeleton that defines the sport for adults: SkiErg, sled push, sled pull, burpee broad jumps, rowing, farmers carry, lunges and wall balls. What changes by age group is how far, how much and how many reps. A 9-year-old and a 15-year-old are not doing the same race, but they wear the same bib colors and race on the same floor on the same afternoon.
Parents and siblings get their own role. Every station has a dedicated viewing area, so a race that could easily turn into a drop-off event instead becomes something a whole family shows up to watch, the way a swim meet or a youth soccer game already works. Spectators can walk the full length of the course rather than staying planted at a single finish line, following one kid from the SkiErg through to the last set of wall balls.
Why Now, and Why Kids
The push into youth racing lands at an odd moment for youth sports. The Aspen Institute’s State of Play 2025 report found that regular sports participation among teenagers 13 to 17 dropped 3 percent in 2024, even as younger kids kept playing at steady rates. Teenagers, it turns out, are the group most likely to quit organized sports altogether, often right when screens and schoolwork start competing hardest for their time. Getting kids off their devices and into motion has become one of the harder problems in youth fitness, and traditional team sports with tryouts and benches are not solving it for every kid.
Hyrox is betting that a race format without a bench, a batting order or a starting lineup keeps more of those kids moving. Nobody sits out a Hyrox race. Everybody who shows up crosses every station, which means a kid who is not fast enough to start on a travel soccer team still gets a full race and a finish line of their own. There is no cut list and no tryout. A racer either shows up on September 19 or they don’t, and if they show up, they finish.
A Fast-Growing Sport Adds a Kids’ Division
The youth debut is not happening on its own. Hyrox has grown from a single event after its 2018 launch into a race circuit expected to run 170 events worldwide in 2026, drawing an estimated 1 million total participants. “We are growing very, very fast,” founder and CEO Christian Toetzke has said of the company’s expansion, a pace that also comes with a stated ambition to see the sport added to the Olympic program by 2032.
Utah’s debut weekend fits that broader push into new markets. Salt Lake City is expected to draw entrants from across the Mountain West, including Denver, Phoenix, Las Vegas, Portland and Seattle, along with competitors from Canada and Mexico, according to race organizers. Adding a kids’ race to a brand-new market gives Hyrox a second entry point beyond the adult field, aimed at families who might never sign up for an adult heat but will bring their kids to try one on a Saturday morning.
What It Means for Utah Gyms
Local fitness businesses have a direct way into the event. Hyrox lets gyms register as an official Youngstars Training Facility, handing coaches a structured program to run kids through ahead of race day instead of leaving families to figure out sled technique on their own in a parking lot. For a Salt Lake City functional fitness scene that has never had a Hyrox event of any kind to train toward, that is a new reason for local boxes and studios to open a kids’ class alongside their adult programming.
That local ripple effect is often how a new race format actually takes hold in a city. A single event weekend comes and goes in three days, but a gym that adds a youth training block keeps kids showing up every week in the months before and after, long after the race itself is over. A coach who spends February teaching burpee broad jumps to a group of 10-year-olds has built a program, not just prepared for one Saturday.
Looking Past the Debut Weekend
Anaheim’s December date suggests Youngstars is not a one-off experiment tucked inside a bigger adult weekend. If the format holds in Salt Lake City and Anaheim, more American cities should expect their own kids’ heats alongside the standard adult schedule in 2027, following the same city-by-city expansion pattern that built the adult side of the sport in the years after 2018.
For now, the story is simpler than any growth chart. A sport built around finishing every station, with no bench and no cuts, is asking American kids between 8 and 15 to show up on September 19 and see what a race without a sideline feels like.
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