XENOM the Decathlon of Fitness™ launches this weekend at Olympia

XENOM the Decathlon of Fitness™ launches this weekend at Olympia with an array of top-class athletes competing from around the world.

These include elite CrossFit female athletes Sam Briggs, once named as the Fittest Woman on Earth, and Kelly Friel who obtained 4th place in this year’s CrossFit Games.

Launched at the Dallas Cowboys training facility in the US in June, Xenom has secured a $15 million investment from DreamWorks co-founder and former Walt Disney Studios Chairman Jeffrey Katzenberg and technology entrepreneur Sujay Jaswa, former CFO of Dropbox.

Xenom fills a gap in the market by offering gym-goers and athletes who train in boxes, garages and gyms worldwide the opportunity to perform and compete in a new stadium-scale global competition which is performed over two days with 10-events, hence the name the Decathlon of Fitness. Using a universal points-based scoring system, it creates the first repeatable global benchmark in functional and hybrid fitness.

Anyone can enter Xenom. But this is not for the faint-hearted. This global competition has been designed to test athletes’ endurance, gymnastic ability, weightlifting and combined metabolic conditioning. All competitors, from elite athletes to dedicated amateurs, complete the same events and are scored though a points-based system, allowing direct comparison on a global scale and a measurable benchmark to track progression.

Founder and CEO of XENOM, Keith Barlow, is a long-standing member of the global CrossFit® and Hybrid fitness community, having spent over a decade training and competing in the industry. He was instrumental in the brand expansion of HYROX alongside co-founders Christian Toetzke and three-time Olympic field hockey medallist Moritz Fürste, scaling participant volume from 500 athletes to over 1.6 million participants globally. This has provided Barlow with insight into both the rapid commercialisation of the space and what investors are now looking for in the next wave of fitness competition properties.

Keith Barlow, XENOM founder and CEO said, “The functional fitness community in the UK and specifically London has exploded over the past decade, but there’s been no consistent way to benchmark progress or compare performance across different competitions. We’re providing that standard – a repeatable test that athletes can use to track improvement season after season.”

Barlow said, “We see an incredible opportunity to build a global competition which reenergises and meets the huge unmet demand from people training in boxes, garages, and gyms around the world. We will allow our competitors to compete on the world’s biggest stages and demonstrate the incredible physical capacity they have built in the gyms for their friends, family and peers to see. XENOM will be the defining cultural platform for high performance and the pursuit of elite fitness.”

“There is a really compelling case for investors looking at this space. When you look at the value placed on successful IP-led events business, you can see that a long-term vision and the ability to deploy capital smartly and tap into consumers who are deeply passionate about their sport are highly valued across the market. It’s sector agnostic and thematically consistent, great brands like IRONMAN, F1 or HYROX all represent the same thing, shared passion and great consumer product, we represent that same opportunity in our space.”

The event will take place in Olympia’s iconic Grand Hall, managed by Olympia Events, and is expected to attract athletes and spectators alike over the August bank holiday weekend. Following a recent £1.3bn transformation, Olympia has been reimagined as a major destination for events, entertainment, hospitality and culture, bringing together its historic event spaces with new hotels, restaurants, bars and live entertainment venues.

Andy O’Sullivan, CEO at Olympia Events, said, “We’re delighted to welcome XENOM to Olympia and become the home of its London launch, bringing elite and aspiring athletes together for a new globally standardised competition in functional and hybrid fitness.

“Olympia is particularly well suited to high-performance fitness events, offering the scale and flexibility needed to create an ambitious competition environment, while the Grand Hall’s striking Victorian architecture and natural daylight provide an inspiring backdrop for both athletes and spectators.

“As the London home of HYROX, we have seen first-hand the growing appetite for major participatory fitness events in the capital. We’re committed to supporting the continued growth of this sector and are excited to work with XENOM as it establishes itself on the UK fitness calendar.”

XENOM’s 2026 schedule features three events in Dallas, London and Miami, before expanding to 8 – 10 events and introducing new sporting formats in 2027 with Malaga and Paris in Q1.