Dubai Fitness Championship Quietly Changes Qualification Method; Adds Two Special Invites

The leaderboard for the Dubai Fitness Championship (“DFC”) online qualifier has been finalized and invites have been sent to the top athletes. However, it appears that organizers of the DFC have changed the number of athletes who will advance to the finals via the online qualifier.

The DFC has changed how it forms the 30 men and 30 women field over the years. In previous years there was an online qualifier with some special invites. Last year, however, it moved to an invite-only competition.

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This year everything pointed to all spots going to the top 30 from the online qualifier.

In an Instagram post on September 10, the caption 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 post was made 9 days before the start of the online qualifier.

And even on the Competition Corner website for the DFC online qualifier, the Event Details tab states that the qualifiers will determine the 30 athlete fields. It even goes on to say, “No invitations will be extended; participation is strictly based on qualification.”

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

It continues, “Participants: 30 individual male athletes and 30 individual female athletes, all of whom have earned their spots through the online qualifiers. No invitations will be extended; participation is strictly based on qualification.”

However, the leaderboard shows a line after the 28th place spot. This would indicate that only 28 athletes would advance to the in-person finals. Then, yesterday, DFC announced the online qualifier leaderboard was final and that 28 athletes would advance and that there would be two special invites from each division.

This was not what was shared with the athletes prior to the start of the online competition and it is unknown when organizers made the change.

What we do know, however, is that Roman Khrennikov was planning on competing at the Dubai Fitness Championship based on his recent post about having to withdraw from the Rogue Invitational. In that, he said he had been planning on competing at Dubai to defend his title.

So at this time only the top 28 from the online qualifier will be advancing to the finals this December. Sorry to Julia Blazejowska, Noortje Bleeker, Morteza Sedaghat and Giorgos Panaretakis who are in those 29th and 30th positions and likely were under the assumption that they were going to qualify.

Here is the link to the online qualifier leaderboard where the top 28 men and women will receive an invite to compete at the Dubai Fitness Championship on December 6-8, 2024.

And on a side note, what happened to DFC’s website?

 

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