Is CrossFit Founder Greg Glassman A Modern Messiah?

CrossFit founder Greg Glassman became filthy rich, then became something else entirely: a spiritual leader with a flock of millions.

- Nellie Bowles

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WHEN GREG GLASSMAN ARRIVES in Boston off a red-eye from Santa Cruz, he doesn’t have much information about the person he’s come to see. He knows that her name is Dawn Ditano and that she is dying. And that for her last rites, she had requested neither a priest nor a rabbi. She had requested him, the 59-year-old cofounder and CEO of the world’s largest fitness chain—CrossFit.

Less than 48 hours later, he marches into Massachusetts General Hospital, accompanied by his Global Brand Manager and occasional body man, an ex-Marine named Jimi Letchford.

“Dawn, the coach is here!” a woman screams as Glassman bursts through the door. From where she lies encircled by a troupe of muscular women in matching gym T-shirts, Ditano shrieks—“Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God”—and starts to cry. “There you are,” Glassman says, laughing as Ditano stares at him in disbelief. He’s used to this now, the stupefying effect he has on CrossFit acolytes. The fact that he’s been summoned here, for this, doesn’t seem to surprise him a bit.

Even in her blue hospital pants and a T-shirt, with her rocky biceps and bulging trapezoids, Ditano looks supremely healthy. The cancer came on that suddenly. Her friends have blown up several photos of her for Glassman to sign. One shows her performing a squat with a 135-pound barbell over her head. She looks unstoppable, like the poster girl for the CrossFit gym she’s co-owned and operated in Boston since 2010.

A plump nurse in a yellow scrub top pauses at the door, surprised by the crowd. “Oh, hello,” she says, looking around at the group of muscle-bound women, at Glassman smiling gamely from Ditano’s side, at the square-jawed Jimi Letchford.