Dubai Fitness Championship Updates

The leaderboard for the Dubai Fitness Championship (DFC) online qualifier has been finalized, and top athletes have received their invitations.

However, there appears to be a change in the number of athletes advancing to the finals via the online qualifier.

In past years, the DFC has varied its approach to forming the 30 men and 30 women fields, sometimes using an online qualifier with special invites and last year opting for an invite-only competition.

This year, it initially seemed that all positions would come from the top 30 in the online qualifier.

An Instagram post on September 10 stated, "The DFC online qualifiers run from September 19th to October 10th, and only the top 30 men and 30 women will qualify for the finals in Dubai, December 6th-8th, with a prize purse of 1.3 million AED!” This was posted nine days before the online qualifier began.

Even the Competition Corner website's Event Details section for the DFC online qualifier noted that the qualifiers would decide the 30 athletes.

It clearly mentioned, "No invitations will be extended; participation is strictly based on qualification."

The event details specified, “These qualifiers will determine the top 30 individual male and 30 individual female athletes who will advance to the finals.”

However, the leaderboard indicates a different story, showing a cutoff after the 28th place. This suggests that only 28 athletes will proceed to the in-person finals.

Subsequently, DFC announced that the online qualifier leaderboard was final and that 28 athletes would advance, along with two special invites from each division.

This news was not conveyed to the athletes before the online competition started, and it is unclear when the organizers made this decision.

What is known is that Roman Khrennikov had planned to compete at the Dubai Fitness Championship, as he mentioned withdrawing from the Rogue Invitational to defend his title in Dubai.

Thus, only the top 28 from the online qualifier will move on to the finals this December. Unfortunately, this affects athletes like Julia Blazejowska, Noortje Bleeker, Morteza Sedaghat, and Giorgos Panaretakis, who are in the 29th and 30th spots and likely assumed they would qualify.

For more information, here’s the link to the online qualifier leaderboard, where the top 28 men and women will receive an invitation to compete at the Dubai Fitness Championship on December 6-8, 2024.

Source: thebarbellspin

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