PUMA names HYROX trio

PUMA has picked three Singapore-based racers to front its 2026 push into one of fitness’s fastest-growing event formats: Ria Chen, Ian Fernando, and Marc Fernando will serve as new HYROX ambassadors for PUMA Singapore. Sport Plus reported that the trio has logged more than 15 HYROX races combined and collected multiple podium finishes around the region. (sportplus.sg) The move lands just days after AIA HYROX Singapore 2026 ran from April 3 to April 5 at the Singapore National Stadium, showing how tightly PUMA is tying its local athlete marketing to a live race calendar that is already drawing large crowds. HYROX’s official Singapore event page listed three days of racing, including solo, doubles, and relay formats built around eight 1-kilometer runs and eight workout stations. (hyrox.com) That format is the reason brands care. HYROX is not a niche obstacle race with mud pits and monkey bars; it is a standardized indoor race that mixes repeatable running segments with functional work, which makes it easier to train for, compare times across cities, and build a year-round community around classes, coaching, and gear. (hyrox.com 1) (hyrox.com 2) PUMA has been building toward this for years. In June 2024, the company announced a worldwide HYROX partnership covering apparel and footwear for all HYROX races from 2024 to 2027, formalizing a relationship that PUMA said began with HYROX’s first Hamburg race in 2018. (about.puma.com) That global deal got even bigger in October 2025. PUMA said it had renewed and extended the partnership through 2030, and said HYROX was expected to draw more than 1.3 million participants worldwide that season, a number that helps explain why local ambassador deals now matter to the company. (about.puma.com) HYROX itself has been pitching that scale aggressively to sponsors. On its sponsorship page, the company says it operates more than 45 races across 11 countries, along with more than 2,000 gym activations and 1,000 affiliate gym partners, which turns a race series into something closer to a traveling retail-and-training network. (hyrox.com) Singapore has become one of the clearest examples of that strategy working. Sport Plus said more than 14,000 participants were expected across the 2026 Singapore weekend, including the event’s first Friday Night Relays, a sign that the local scene is no longer just a one-day competition for elite athletes. (sportplus.sg) That is the backdrop for the three appointments. PUMA Singapore is not just attaching its logo to a global property; it is putting recognizable local athletes in front of a market where HYROX already has recurring events, media coverage, spectators, and a training audience that wants race-specific shoes, apparel, and coaching content. (sportplus.sg) (hyrox.com) The ambassador choice also fits how HYROX sells itself to everyday entrants. The official Singapore race page invites people to compete solo, split the workload in doubles, or race in a four-person relay, which means the sport needs role models who look accessible enough for first-timers but credible enough for serious racers chasing podiums. (hyrox.com) PUMA has been signaling that it wants both ends of that market. In a June 2025 company release ahead of the HYROX World Championships in Chicago, PUMA described its HYROX athlete program as support for “athletes of all levels,” while also linking the brand to the elite end of the sport through championship events and performance footwear. (about.puma.com) The likely next step in Singapore is not hard to guess from the playbook already visible elsewhere in HYROX culture: more branded training sessions, more athlete-led social content, more partner gym appearances, and more product seeding around race weekends. That is partly an inference, but it is grounded in HYROX’s own emphasis on gym activations and affiliate networks, plus Sport Plus’s framing of the new signings as part of PUMA’s push into the expanding hybrid fitness racing scene. (hyrox.com) (sportplus.sg) For followers of the sport, the names matter less than the timing. When a global sportswear company extends a worldwide HYROX deal through 2030, then adds local ambassadors in a city that just staged a record-setting race weekend, it usually means the brand sees Singapore not as a side market but as one of the places where HYROX culture is becoming mainstream. (about.puma.com) (sportplus.sg)