CrossFit Gyms Founder Resigns Amid Black Lives Matter Furor

Mr. Glassman had been hosting such calls for the last several months, to check in with gym owners whose businesses have been temporarily closed by government-ordered shutdowns due to the coronavirus pandemic.

This particular conference call came while many were asking Mr. Glassman on social media to make a statement in support of Black Lives Matter, and several hours before Mr. Glassman responded to a tweet that said “Racism is a public health issue” with the sentence, “It’s FLOYD-19.”

That tweet set off a public outcry and prompted an apology statement from Mr. Glassman the next day. “I made a mistake by the words I chose yesterday,” the statement said. “My heart is deeply saddened by the pain it has caused. It was a mistake, not racist but a mistake.” By Tuesday, nearly 1,200 gyms said they planned to disaffiliate from CrossFit.

But before the tweet came the Zoom call, which was held with more than a dozen people, including gym owners and employees of the corporate office, known as HQ. The event devolved into expletive-filled rants by Mr. Glassman, in which he referenced conspiracy theories and fought with a gym owner on the topics of race, racism and the responsibility of white business owners to show support for the black community amid a national time of reckoning.

“CrossFit is very popular with first-responders, military and law enforcement. It has very close ties to those communities,” said Justin LoFranco, the founder of Morning Chalk Up, a six-days-a-week newsletter devoted to CrossFit news, who also has heard the recording of the Zoom call. “But I don’t think Greg Glassman said these things because he feels a need to defend those communities. I think this is what Greg Glassman thinks.”

On the call, Mr. Glassman said he didn’t “trust” a member of the CrossFit community who had already begun to complain publicly about the fitness company’s relative lack of response to Mr. Floyd’s death and protests that resulted.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/09/style/crossfit-gyms-founder-protests.html