“Today is the saddest day in @CrossFit history,” the group wrote in one other message on X Aug. 8. “We are shattered by the loss of Lazar Dukic along with the entire CrossFit community.”

The message continued, “Lazar was one of our sport’s most talented competitors, but he was much more than an athlete. He was a son, a brother, and a friend to practically everyone who knew him. Fiercely competitive, incurably joyful and uncommonly kind, Lazar was the sun of any room he was in. The loss of his light is inconceivable.”

Dukic’s youthful brother, fellow CrossFit Games competitor Luka Dukic, additionally shared an homage to the late athlete.

“You loved the sport that didn’t love you back,” he wrote on his Instagram Stories, together with a photograph of the stadium occasion devoted to Lazar. “No tribute will ever give you back to me. This is something that could have been prevented and there is no way of going around it.”

He continued, “My brother, you touched more lives than you know and you will live forever.”