CrossFit executive Dave Castro has apologized for how he handled the announcement last month that the CrossFit Games would go ahead following the death of 28-year-old Serbian participant Lazar Dukic during the swim leg on the first day of competition.
On Thursday morning, Dukic's brother and fellow CrossFit competitor Luka Dukic criticized Castro on Instagram for a conversation the two allegedly had on Aug. 8, hours after Lazar Dukic's body was recovered from Marine Creek Lake in Fort Worth. The cause of death has not been released.
Luka Dukic wrote that Castro told him the organization wanted to continue the games “as a tribute to his brother.”
“At that point, I was in a state of mind that allowed me to say a lot of things, but the most important ones were, ‘I don’t care, nothing will bring him back,’ and ‘I don’t think he’s thinking straight, so this decision shouldn’t be up to me,’” Dukic wrote. “Dave responded, ‘It’s not up to you anyway.’”
“Later, the decision to continue with the Games was presented as ‘the family’s wish.’”
Castro responded Thursday night on Instagram: “I should never have said that the decision to continue with the CrossFit Games in August was ‘blessed’ by his family. At that time, the decision was made to continue with the Games and allow our athletes to compete, and we respect the athletes who chose to withdraw. This decision was made by CrossFit and I never intended to put the weight of this decision on Luka, the Dukic family, or our CrossFit athletes.
“I have never been in a situation like this before and I made a total mistake. I am sincerely sorry for any pain I have caused.”
The Instagram post represented Luka Dukic’s first public comments since his brother’s death. In it, Dukic criticized CrossFit for its lack of preparation for an emergency of such magnitude and how it responded as the situation unfolded and in its aftermath.
“While I will not point fingers in this post or try to ruin anyone's name,” Dukic wrote, “I feel obligated to my family to do everything legally within my power to ask questions, dig deeper into this case and try to see who is at fault.” [it] There was no reaction from the multi-million dollar organization whose main job is to make this weekend perfect.”
Dukic said the last time he saw his brother was when they entered the water on the first day of this year’s CrossFit Games. Luka, the weaker swimmer of the two, said he had been passed by several other athletes, “so I couldn’t really see where Lazar was or how he was holding up.” It wasn’t until a while after he finished, Dukic wrote, that he realized his brother hadn’t returned from the lake.
He later watched footage of the race broadcast live by the competition.
“What I saw next on the video was that there was no attempt to save Lazar,” Luka wrote, “he was struggling and fell near two very poorly equipped volunteers (yes) on the paddle board who didn’t see him and very close to the finish line.”
He further said in the post: “How could this happen in a competition of this size, how could it happen on a live stream and to someone who was very easy to follow as he was one of the few people in the lead?”
Dukic also detailed an Aug. 9 conversation with Castro in which they discussed a memorial for his brother planned for later that day.
“I asked Dave, because I know he oversees everything, to give me the level of privacy I needed at the time,” Dukic wrote. “I wanted to attend the memorial… but I didn’t want any media around me, I didn’t want to be near the athletes, and I didn’t want to be on screen.
“Since my wish was not respected, I had no further conversations with anyone at headquarters after that. I was asked to meet Dave on Saturday night, which I declined, and I was asked to attend the closing ceremony, which I also declined.”
In response to questions from The Times about Luka Dukic’s post and the events surrounding Lazar Dukic’s death, CrossFit emailed Castro’s statement from Thursday night as well as an Aug. 23 statement from the organization announcing a third-party investigation into the death and the company’s intention to “build greater trust and confidence for the future of our sport.”
But more than anything else, Luka Dukic's Instagram post paid tribute to someone who was much more than a brother to him.
“He was my brother, my best friend, my idol, my competition partner, my training partner, someone I turned to when I didn’t know what to do and someone I turned to when I had good news,” Dukic wrote.
“Following the path he created for both of us, we became even closer than I ever imagined we would be when we were kids. On Thursday, August 8, I lost it all, in the most traumatic and tragic way possible. While we were chasing our dream.”
