Athletes fight for title of UAE's fittest person

Adrian Hayes, a mountain climber and polar adventurer, will join more than 70 athletes to battle for the title.

Dubai // Adrian Hayes, a mountain climber and polar adventurer, will join more than 70 athletes today to battle for the title of the UAE's fittest person. Mr Hayes, who won the competition back in the 1990s before it was disbanded, will join several previous winners at Ibn Battuta Mall in a bid to raise money for All as One, a Dubai-based charity that cares for orphans in Sierra Leone.

Mr Hayes recently was recognised for having accomplished the fastest trip between Mt Everest, the North Pole and the South Pole. The Ultimate X-Training Challenge is a fitness contest launched in 1994 by British expatriate Gary Melhuish, now the area business manager of Fitness First Middle East (FF). He has relaunched the event, which will see competitors compete a series of exercise challenges as quickly as possible. "Other clubs and hotels set up their own version and it always niggled at me," he said. "So when I joined FF a year ago we decided to launch it again."

Eight clubs from the UAE are participating in the event as well as three international teams who are flying in from Jordan, Bahrain and Lebanon. @Email:[e-mail]