A memorial was held Friday morning at Dickies Arena to honor and remember a CrossFit athlete who died while competing in a run-swim event in Fort Worth on Thursday.
During the inaugural run-swim event Thursday morning, a swimmer apparently began to have trouble and was seen slipping underwater. According to the Fort Worth Fire Department, they were called to the lake at about 8 a.m. to help find the missing swimmer. After about an hour, they located the man's body. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner's Office identified the man Thursday afternoon as 28-year-old Lazar Dukic, of Serbia. A cause of death has not yet been confirmed.
After suspending the day's competitions, CrossFit said late Thursday that the games would continue and Friday’s events would begin with a special tribute at Dickies Arena honoring Lazar.
"Today is the saddest day in CrossFit history. We are shattered by the loss of Lazar Đukić along with the entire CrossFit community. Lazar was one of our sport’s most talented competitors, but he was much more than an athlete. He was a son, a brother, and a friend to practically everyone who knew him. Fiercely competitive, incurably joyful and uncommonly kind, Lazar was the sun of any room he was in. The loss of his light is inconceivable. The first instinct is to shut down. To isolate. To mourn. But the only cure for grief is to grieve. And the best way to grieve is together. In our community, coming together to do hard things is how we pay tribute. In this spirit, we have decided to move forward with the 2024 CrossFit Games. This weekend is dedicated to Lazar Đukić. We will open tomorrow at 10:00 am."
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A crowd gathered inside Dickies Arena in Fort Worth Friday morning at 10 a.m., to start the day with a short service remembering Dukic.
At Friday's event, Crossfit fans said, at least temporarily, they were setting aside preferences for competing athletes to rally behind Dukic.
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“When something like this happens, it doesn’t matter which athletes you follow or which country you’re from, we all come together to mourn the loss," said Jacob Caddy, who traveled to the games from the United Kingdom.
Like others in the arena, Caddy grappled with whether more could've been done to prevent Dukic's death.
“Ultimately, they are the best of the best and they are pushing themselves to their absolute limit. And I guess when you combine that with a body of water, you roll the dice to an extent, don’t you, and you just have to hope that the proper procedures are in place to avoid it. And now that something like this has happened, hopefully, it’ll never happen again,” he said.
“It doesn’t make sense to anybody," said Dotri Deo, visiting from Utah.
Deo said she hopes temperature, location and the order of events of a swim followed by a run will be considered as possible lessons learned.
“He did something to the community that we are never going to forget," she said.
