Photograph: Provided by Joshua Al-chamaa
“This is going to sound like a shitty thing to say, but I hadn’t even processed that someone could possibly be dying. That didn’t make sense to me,” Joshua Al-chamaa says. “With all these competition things spinning in my head, the last thing that I was processing was that someone could be dead.”
The British athlete had his mind set on his team becoming back-to-back world champions in the 2024 CrossFit Games when Lazar Dukic, a Serbian athlete competing in the Aquathlon event, disappeared under the surface of Marine Creek Lake and drowned.
“I was stood on the sidelines, ready to start our heat, and we heard that someone was missing in the water,” Al-chamaa remembers. “We were one side of these bushes and someone had gone missing just over to the other side. Everyone’s saying, ‘A person’s gone missing. Surely, they made a mistake. They’re going to be found.’ No one knew who it was at the time.
“Then we started hearing these whispers. ‘It’s Lazar,’ ‘They still haven’t found Lazar,’ ‘What’s going on?’ Then the paramedics and the boats started rolling in and we got told to leave.”
The heaviness still hangs over Al-chamaa. The 33-year-old, whose boundless energy had been so infectious in our first chat in October 2023, appeared to be sapped of that previously youthful verve. Although he was not as close with Dukic as some of his team, the death of a fellow competitor has shaken CrossFit and Al-chamaa to the core.
“The biggest shock was that it could have been anyone. I’ve been in moments in a workout where I think I could collapse. We all have. That’s what made it hard for a lot of us,” Al-chamaa says. “Processing everything that happened and the severity of it took a while. It was only really after the games when I went on vacation and then came home that the weight of it started setting in.
“Maybe there’s more out there than this idea of CrossFit. People do get hurt in many sports, but it was just the way in which someone lost their life was hard for me to deal with.”
It is a marked shift in attitude in Al-chamaa who, just eighteen months earlier, believed he had found his purpose in life through the sport. “I want to love and appreciate CrossFit again, because it did so much for me. It changed my life. Not only was it a way to use my skills but it helped me with my confidence. I met my wife through it. I now have a child through it. I’ve built a home through it.
“But when something so serious like this happens, it does tarnish it a little bit,” he says.
Despite losing that obsessive motivation to compete and win in CrossFit, Al-chamaa has become far more appreciative of his own life outside of the sport.
“Leading up to the games, I trained harder than I’ve ever trained in my life and it was a really special year in terms of building relationships. My team, Chandler [Smith], Lauren [Fisher] and Jessi [Smith], talked about winning a gold medal together but it didn’t happen.
“But afterwards, I took a step back and the medal was irrelevant. What we built, this friendship, this relationship, what we proved we could do to our bodies are the things we’re going to remember,” he explains.
As for his future plans, Al-chamaa is stepping back from the sport. “I need to take a break, I need to process, I need to find the love again,” he says as he turns his attention to competing in HYROX and training for a marathon.
Since speaking, Al-chamaa has been surrounded by yet more loss. The Hackney-born athlete had chased his CrossFit dream to Los Angeles where he made a home and family. Yet, last month, huge wild fires swept across the city, destroying homes and businesses, as well as killing 29 people.
“I had to go down to my brother’s place and stay with him for a little while, and at one point, we had one fire below us and one fire above us,” he explains over a voice note. “It was a terrible situation.”
Despite the destruction, Al-chamaa finds positives in how, “amongst the devastation of many people losing their homes and everything that they own, it has been incredible to see the greater part of LA coming together and supporting each other.
“It will always be a bit of a weird one, because you always think about, could this have been stopped or prevented? It just felt like things weren’t in place, especially when knowing that wildfires are a regular thing in California.”
Al-chamaa had already started studying to become a qualified firefighter when the fires broke out and has undergone work to remove the tattoos on his neck in an attempt to become more presentable for public service work.
While his determination is admirable, would joining the emergency service expose him to yet more loss in his life? “I think the pride in knowing that you could save is more powerful to me than the idea that you’re going to see loss.
“If I can do something that can help save lives, that has more of an impact on me than the idea of loss. Yeah, I’m going to come across loss, but we all come across loss, whether it’s in your job or in your day-to-day life, we will have to experience it,” he replies.
Despite being shrouded by death and grief, Al-chamaa is capable of finding light. “I’ve got another child on the way,” he smiles. “I haven’t actually told many people yet, so I’ve just dropped that bomb on you, but we’re having another child.”
A lot has changed in the world and in Al-chamaa’s life in the past eighteen months and as our second, more sombre chat draws to a natural close, Al-chamaa adds: “I’m glad you caught me at this time. It’s nice to talk about it all. I’m in this really weird transition phase where I’m very much focused on continuing to be an athlete, but I’m also focused on how I can be present for my family.
“We take things so seriously, and we think things are so lasting, but we are so irrelevant. In the grand scheme of life, there was life before us, and there’ll be much life after us. You just need to be a good person, love wholeheartedly and just enjoy life.”
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Jack McRae writes... 