Meeting with Coach Lee Sang-hak.
During warmup at a HYROX competition, Coach Lee Sang-hak’s ankle gave way. Just once. One landing. The shoe failed to hold the ground — and that split second was enough to cost him the Osaka race.
HYROX Age group 3rd place player in Korea, after hundreds of hours of training, the final variable wasn’t his fitness. It was his footwear. He had to watch Osaka from the sidelines.
The question stayed with him long after.
That’s how DARIMATI found him. Or rather, how he found us.
DARIMATI a running shoe brand born on the Han River in Seoul, built specifically for the demands of city movement — not a track, not a treadmill, but the real, uneven, multidirectional grind of urban life. We freshly launched our first running shoe, BR-001.
When we met Coach Lee in Jeonju and heard about the Osaka race, something clicked. The injury wasn’t bad luck. It was a design gap that most running shoes haven’t solved.
What HYROX actually demands from a shoe.
HYROX is a global fitness race built around one simple format: eight 1km runs, each followed by functional workout stations. No team, no shortcuts. Just you and the course.
Since its debut in Germany in 2017, it has grown to 750,000 participants across 31 countries. London’s last event drew 70,000 applicants for 16,000 spots. HYROX is no longer a niche. It’s where serious fitness is heading.
If you’ve never done HYROX, here’s the deal: it’s not just running. It’s 1km runs alternated with 8 functional workout stations — kettlebell carries, burpees, rowing, ski ergs, and more. Your feet go forward, sideways, rotational, under load.
Standard road running shoes are engineered for one direction: forward. Everything else?
You’re on your own.
DARIMATI BR-001 was built differently. Inspired by the biomechanics of the leg itself, the A-TPU midsole absorbs impact, aligns force, and releases it as controlled propulsion — stable under lateral load, responsive when you’re back to running.
Coach Lee put it simply after a few weeks of training in the BR-001: “I felt it would let me do more.”
Traction that didn’t slip. Rebound that was there every step. And a landing stability that mattered more after the injury — because his feet had become more honest about what they needed.
The global fitness community saw it first.
Here’s something that surprised us: when DARIMATI launched on Kickstarter, one of the most common comments in the thread was:
“This looks like the perfect HYROX shoe.” And coach Lee confirmed it was.
The Korean HYROX scene was just beginning to blow up domestically. But the global fitness community had already mapped the connection. That signal pushed us to find a Korean HYROX expert who could tell us whether the instinct was right.
Better shoes, build together.
We didn’t want a standard endorsement deal. We wanted something with more integrity.
So instead, we made a different kind of agreement: every time a new sample comes out of production, Coach Lee wears it first. His feedback goes directly into the next version.
A person who has been racing HYROX for years — inside the process of building the shoe.
That’s the structure. That’s how DARIMATI is developing footwear for HYROX — with the people who actually know what it takes.
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We’ll keep sharing the story of what we’re building — and what we’re building next.