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With its excessive warmth and difficult landscapes, Abu Dhabi is positioning itself as a distinctive vacation spot for endurance sports activities.
This week sees the return of the Spartan World Championship, among the many most demanding impediment races on the worldwide circuit, and January brings the Challenge Sir Bani Yas long-distance triathlon.
The Spartan World Championship is again for its fifth 12 months within the United Arab Emirates, and its fourth within the Al Wathba desert, with its grueling mixture of steep dunes and salt flats.
Even for elite athletes, desert racing can come as a shock to the system. Quinten Hansen, Spartan’s occasion director, defined to NCS that the desert terrain “adds a huge competitive element” to the course. Deep sand, steep dunes and warmth flip typical operating into climbing, crawling and “trudging” via comfortable floor.
This 12 months, the four-day occasion will welcome athletes from greater than 50 nations. Many arrive in Abu Dhabi a week or two early to acclimatize, and of their residence nations they are going to usually practice via seashore operating or steep hill work if dunes aren’t accessible. Hansen identified that for high athletes, “if you don’t have the mind to push through some of those elements, the physical training’s not going to matter.”
The 2025 course can also be set to function obstacles not normally seen at different Spartan races. Hansen highlighted the Helix impediment, alongside upgraded Stairway to Sparta and Vertical Cargo. The Helix challenges athletes to navigate a twisting construction utilizing exact handholds and footholds, Stairway requires climbing a ladder-like A-frame, and Vertical Cargo checks power and coordination as racers scale a tall body strung with webbing.
“One of the most unique additions” mentioned Hansen, might be a desert-specific tractor pull — the place a cement block is dragged round a looped course, digging into the sand and creating heavy resistance.
Community and tradition
While the occasion’s morning classes belong to elite racers, Spartan’s afternoons shift to Open Heats — the noncompetitive events the place anybody who’s registered can participate, tackling the identical course at their very own tempo with out time strain or qualification necessities.
Hansen emphasised that regardless of the aggressive fame of the impediment course race, within the Open Heats problem “once you cross that start line, you’re never alone.”
He added that racers have included “veterans who have lost their legs, wheelchair users being assisted and pushed through. It really lifts you up and provides a huge community effort.”
The Abu Dhabi championship additionally contains a girls’s-only night time race, held at nightfall on November 20. It’s designed to maximise cultural inclusion, with one warmth the place pictures is permitted and one the place it isn’t, supposed for girls who don’t wish to be photographed, for cultural or private causes.
Beyond the course itself, the championship integrates native companies and traditions. In the pageant space, racers and attendees encounter handmade pottery, conventional cooking and regional dance performances. Hansen described the ambiance as “exhilarating” and “a big show, unlike a standard US or European Spartan event.”
Weeks after Spartan, on the finish of January 2026, Abu Dhabi will host Challenge Sir Bani Yas — described because the Middle East’s first long-distance triathlon.
Sir Bani Yas Island is thought for its desert dunes, wildlife reserve and rugged shoreline. The course will mix open-water swimming, lengthy desert-bordering bike segments and a operating route formed across the island’s protected panorama.
Part of the Challenge Family collection of worldwide triathlons, the organizers state on their web sites that the occasion will host athletes from round 45–50 nations in its debut 12 months — a signal, maybe, that Abu Dhabi is starting to ascertain itself on the endurance racing map.