Luka Ðukić went into the 2024 CrossFit Games with his brother, Lazar, by his side. He left the weekend shattered, alone, and unsure how to move forward.
- The Serbian athlete has shown grit and courage in his return to the competition floor since the tragic death of his brother, experiencing the full gamut of emotions while finding success at the Belgrade Games and winning the Dubai Fitness Championship.
He looks to continue that momentum into the new year while keeping his brother’s memory and legacy at the top of the community’s mind.
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The Details
Ðukić is set to compete all four days at TYR Wodapalooza in Miami, FL. The first step is to take the floor as an individual, and then he’ll compete on a team with Harry Lightfoot and Moritz Fiebig.
Ðukić and his coach, John Singleton, recently released a documentary following Ðukić’s journey to the Dubai competition.
The full documentary, titled One Dream, is a candid look at Ðukić’s road back to training after the emotional toll of losing his brother.
- “Of course in the situation that happened and everything, my first goal was honestly to be strong for my parents and be there for them. And then as time was passing, I just realized that I wasn’t really myself without being in the gym and training,” Ðukić said in the documentary.
Singleton, a long-established coach, leader in the European CrossFit community, and founder of The Progrm, said that he saw Ðukić sign up for The Progrm training and reached out to him to see if he needed anything, which started their current relationship as coach and athlete.
- “John was the one that was helping me get ready for the Dubai qualifier, and the first thing I told him was I don’t know where I’m going to place,” said Ðukić, who ended up finishing the Dubai qualifiers in first.
He trained exclusively with Singleton up until the competition in December.
Winning Dubai
The Dubai competition went well for Ðukić, who had an overall steady performance across events. He took first in one event and finished in the top three in four others.
The film captures the ups and downs Ðukić faced, both physically and emotionally, all with Singleton at his side.
- “In any live competition, in any situation, especially in CrossFit, because there’s so much variance, you never know what’s going to happen. You never know what the programming is. There’s a lot more unknowns,” Singleton said in the documentary.
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During the competition itself, Ðukić told Singleton about a moment when he could feel his brother’s presence after the obstacle course event.
- “I think these are the moments that you don’t necessarily see on camera,” Singleton said. “He [Luka] came up to me and said: one of the obstacles he felt he was falling and just felt Lazar’s presence there kind of guiding him across and getting him through.”
The outcome was exactly what both Ðukić and Singleton had hoped for. Ðukić got to stand on top of the podium for both himself and his brother.
- “Mentally, it was very hard in the end, of course. Everything that I was trying to put aside to be able to compete kind of caught me in the end. But we knew that. That’s how we planned,” Ðukić said.
Looking Ahead
Aside from doing TYR Wodapalooza in a few days, Ðukić has also “signed” with the newly created World Fitness Project or WFP. The inaugural season will include three in-person competitions where athletes will compete against other “signed” athletes and challengers for pro cards for 2026.
Ðukić shares that winning Dubai was always his brother’s dream, not his.
- And even though winning the event for Lazar was a proud moment for him, the hardest part was knowing that nothing had changed.
“Because as much as I want to win Dubai, the biggest thing that I want will never come to me and that’s the hardest thing to accept,” Ðukić said.
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Featured image: @luka.djukic / Instagram
