CROSSFIT GAMES UPDATE: DUBAI CROSSFIT CHAMPIONSHIP RECAP

Photo Courtesy of Dubai CrossFit Championship — Photo Courtesy of **Dubai CrossFit Championship**

This past weekend was a monumental moment for CrossFit, as the first sanctioned event occurred in Dubai. A large and talented field of men, women, and teams took the floor over four days of grueling and exciting competition with qualifier spots to the Games on the line.

First, the results.

The competition was very close on the ladies side, and a blowout on the dudes side (go figure). In a super close race that came down to the last event, Sam Briggs squeaked out a victory over Jamie Greene and Sara Sigmunsdottir to clinch her bid, and the first ever sanctioned bid, to the Reebok CrossFit Games. On the dudes side, Matt Fraser wrecked everyone, winning 7 of a possible 10 events on his way to an emphatic bid to defend his three consecutive CrossFit Games titles. Being 100% transparent, I didn't watch a lick of the team events until the end. That being said, CrossFit Invictus won a spot to the Games, lead by CrossFit power couple Lauren Fisher and Rasmus Anderson.

Now, to the story lines.

The biggest storylines at the beginning of the weekend had to be the media aspect. Dubai is half way around the world, and you would have had to be up at 2-3AM to catch most of the action happening in Dubai live. Unfortunately, the competition ran into issues with their live streams throughout the weekend, causing issues to delayed viewers world wide.

For starters, all of Day 1 was removed due to music being heard in the background. Due to copyright issues, the stream was removed in its' entirety. This day included both beach events that seemed from the highlights to be a ton of fun.

Day 2 and beyond had issues originally that seemed to have gotten cleared up. 24 hours post event, that day of footage was posted at 2 hours long. For whatever reason, only the last 2 hours of the day were available for immediate viewing. For both Day 3 and Day 4, this issue was corrected eventually, and now anyone can go on and watch the last two full days.

Outside of that, the biggest stories were injuries. Both Ben Smith and Laura Horvath, perennial contenders in Games season, had to pull out due to injury. They are both supposed to have a swift recovery, and will live on to fight for a spot in the future.

Finally, my thoughts.

This was a big weekend for any CrossFit Games fan, and if you are one of us you should be THRILLED. Why? Because the whole media team was essentially the CrossFit Games crew. When you get past the streaming issues, the whole crew of vets did an amazing job. Marston and Heber were leading the camera crew per usual, we had Bill Grundler and friends in the booth, and most of our familiar friends doing post workout interviews. Turns out even if CrossFit HQ didn't want to hold onto them, our community doesn't need to say goodbye to this media crew just yet. My hope is that moving forward, this crew continues to work these events to give us fans the best possible product we could hope for.

If you haven't watched the event yet, give it a look. The events were tons of fun and the athletes did a spectacular job. Onto the next, sights set to Miami, FL in early January for Wodapalooza. Things are about to ramp up as we hit 2019, so be ready!

Marc, OUT! What did you think about this event? Let us know in the comments or shoot us an email anytime at staff@voyedgerx.com