Dubai CrossFit Championship Canceled for 2021 Season

On Saturday, the organizers of the Dubai CrossFit Championship announced the cancelation of their event this December. This Sanctional is the first casualty of the 2021 CrossFit Games season due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

One big thing: According to the New York Times Global Coronavirus tracker, the United Arab Emirates, a nation of nearly 10 million people, currently reports 18,198 cases and 198 deaths, that means 189 cases per 100,000 people. For comparison, Georgia, the first state in the United States to begin re-opening, currently reports 300 cases per 100,000 people. The DCC was the third Sanctional to take place this season following the Filthy 150 and the Pandaland CrossFit Challenge. Currently, Ireland reports 474 cases per 100,000 people, while China reports nearly 5000 deaths and was the origin point of the virus. The DCC cancelation raises the question of what might happen to the 2021 season, as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Another big thing: CrossFit Games athletes just lost a huge payday in the 2021 season. The Dubai CrossFit Championship boasts the biggest prize purse of the season outside the CrossFit Games. While the individual winners receive the same prize — $50,000 — as Wodapalooza and the Rogue Invitational, the DCC pays out for qualification and event wins (that sometimes jump to the tens of thousands of dollars mid-competition). The individual division payouts alone exceeded $520,000 in 2019, before factoring in the teams.

The bottom line: Citing “ongoing circumstances and international conditions” the organizers of the Dubai CrossFit Championship made the call to cancel before their scheduled event qualifier in June.

• One of the premier Sanctionals, the Dubai CrossFit Championship was planned for December, just under eight months away.
• The Dubai CrossFit Championship is unique from most Sanctionals in that a large part of their athlete field comes from not just outside their country but outside of their region.
• With travel restrictions possibly extending into next year for some countries including their own, logistically it would be hard to hold an international event.
• This year’s event was planned to be unique from any other Sanctional. Organizers had planned on covering all expenses for all qualifiers and the event itself would include different tests of fitness outside of traditional CrossFit workouts.
• CrossFit HQ effectively ended the 2020 Sanctional season on Saturday when it announced it would only extend Games invitations to the eligible athletes from the ten Sanctionals that hosted in-person competitions.
• Before HQ’s announcement, eight Sanctionals had been canceled with another eight postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic.