Greg Glassman, CrossFit’s embattled founder who stepped down as its CEO two weeks ago after fallout over his incendiary comments about the killing of George Floyd, is selling the company he started in Santa Cruz 20 years ago.
Glassman has an agreement to sell to Eric Roza, a former Oracle executive and owner of a Colorado-based CrossFit gym, officials at CrossFit announced Wednesday.
No terms of the deal were revealed, but Roza, who works for venture capitalist firm General Catalyst, will take over next month when the sale is scheduled to close.
It’s been a tumultuous couple of weeks for the 63-year-old Glassman, who’s been excoriated for trivializing Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers as well as the nation’s anti-racism movement it created.
Last week, Glassman was also the subject of a New York Times story detailing claims of his rampant sexual harassment of the company’s female employees.
— Eric Roza (@RozaEric) June 24, 2020
In a Twitter post Wednesday, Roza laid out a clear vision for CrossFit once he takes over, saying “My view is simple: Racism and sexism are abhorrent and will not be tolerated in CrossFit.”
Earlier this month, Glassman’s Twitter activity created trouble for the company. While commenting on a tweet by the Institute of Health Metrics and Evaluation about how “Racism is a public health issue,” Glassman tweeted, “It’s Floyd-19” in a reference to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Glassman also took aim at the health research organization for attempting to design a “solution to racism” when he felt the institute couldn’t properly deal with the effects of coronavirus.
However, another troublesome event for Glassman came to light a couple days later when a recording of a Zoom call showed him telling gym owners, “we’re not mourning for George Floyd.”
Glassman’s behavior led to financial troubles for CrossFit, which was already dealing with closures due to Coronavirus. Reebok and a number of other partners cut ties with CrossFit.
If Glassman’s outlook on Floyd’s death and the social and racial justice movement wasn’t damaging enough for the CrossFit guru, the New York Times delivered another damning indictment of him.
The Times interviewed former employees, and four CrossFit athletes with strong ties to the company, which revealed a management culture rife with overt and vulgar talk about women: their bodies, how much male employees, primarily Glassman, would like to have sex with them and how lucky the women should feel to have his rabid interest.
Those who spoke with the Times said Glassman verbally demeaned women, pulled at their clothes to try to peek at their cleavage and aimed his phone’s camera to snap photos of their breasts while they traveled with him for work (sometimes pressuring them to consider sharing hotel rooms or borrowed houses with him).
Through a company spokesman and spokeswoman, Glassman denied such conduct took place.
From its humble beginnings in Santa Cruz, Glassman and his ex-wife, Lauren Jenai, built the fitness brand into a world-wide phenomenon, with an estimated 13,000 gyms in 158 countries — only to have things come crashing down upon him because of self-inflicted damage.
“It did so well and became so popular that it has become a thing far larger than I could have hoped,” Glassman said in a statement Wednesday. “The world has changed, but the magnificent human machine, the proven benefits of CrossFit, and its market opportunity remain unchanged. It is time for the founder to bid adieu and find other creative outlets.”
Wire services contributed to this report.
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