As the Dubai Fitness Challenge marks its 10th edition, a triple world karate champion, a professional bodybuilder and an 11-year-old sprinter nicknamed ‘Bolt’ show why, for some DAMAC residents, the city’s month of movement is simply everyday life
At sunrise in DAMAC Hills, Gwendoline Philippe laces up her trainers, steps through her garden gate and runs. Ten kilometres later, past trees and lakes, she is home before much of the city has had its first coffee.
This month, hundreds of thousands of Dubai residents will try to build a similar habit as the annual Dubai Fitness Challenge returned for its 10th edition on October 31, asking residents and visitors to complete 30 minutes of activity every day for 30 days.
Dubai Ride opened the calendar on Sheikh Zayed Road on November 1, Dubai Run takes over the same stretch on November 22, and more than 30 community fitness hubs are offering free classes across the city.
For some residents of DAMAC’s communities, though, the 30×30 is less a challenge than a description of an ordinary day.
Gwendoline Philippe: Slowing down to go further
Philippe, originally from Brittany, France’s northwesternmost region that juts out toward the Atlantic Ocean, started karate at five, won her first national title at 11, and never lost on French soil again.
Asked what her goal was, she said world champion without hesitating. “People smiled. Some laughed. That only made me more certain,” she says.
At 13, she left her family in a small coastal town in western France to join a training centre hundreds of kilometres away. It was there she met her husband, also selected for their first World Championship. She went on to win three world titles.
Dubai has been the backdrop to both her highs and her lows. She won a World Cup here a few months before the Olympic Games; in 2020, she suffered a complete rupture of her anterior cruciate ligament mid-fight in the city. “It shook me, but it also rebuilt me,” she says. In 2025, a few hundred metres from that same gymnasium, she gave birth to her son, Ayden.
Now 27, Philippe runs an international digital marketing agency with her husband, and home is where she lets the city’s pace drop away. “Dubai moves fast. Everything here is grand, spectacular, always in motion. But at home, I need to feel time slow down,” she says.
She ticks off what sits within reach: tennis and padel courts, an athletics track, pools, a farm, an equestrian centre, a fishing lake and playgrounds for Ayden. “They forgot no one,” she says. “My morning runs feel like a retreat. Life here has a rhythm that I didn’t expect to find in Dubai.”
Edgard John-Augustin: Built from the ground up
Edgard John-Augustin, known to his followers as Bionic Body, lost both his legs in an accident while growing up in the faraway French Guiana, the second-largest region of France and the largest outermost region within the European Union, when he was all of four.
He started training to lose weight and, as he puts it, to be happy with the guy in the mirror. The gym became his therapy, his discipline and eventually his career.
Today the proud father of three boys is a professional bodybuilder who competes on stage alongside able-bodied athletes, and has finished in the top four at a professional competition.
“I realised it was becoming something bigger when people started telling me that my journey inspired them to overcome their own difficulties,” he says.
He moved to Dubai in 2022 as a single father and chose DAMAC Hills 2 for its green spaces, playgrounds and sports facilities. Now a personal trainer and online coach, he says having a gym inside the community lets training fit around family. “I can focus on my career, my training and my kids without feeling like I have to sacrifice one for the other.”
His plans include growing his coaching business and showing that disability does not mean inability. “At the end of the day, bodybuilding is what I do, but being a father is who I am,” he says.
Leon Toniutto: The boy they call Bolt
Speed runs in the Toniutto family. Leon’s grandfather was a sprinter in Italy, and his father, Marco Toniutto, clocked 10.94 seconds for the 100 metres at 16.
Leon, who has just turned 11, was born in Italy and came to the UAE as a six-month-old baby. His father first spotted his gift in a park in Italy during the pandemic, when a five-year-old Leon raced – and beat – a boy of 10.
At eight, a blistering run at a school sports day had teachers and classmates calling him Bolt.
The results followed. He won Dubai Schools (DASSA) gold in the 80m and 150m in both 2025 and 2026, finishing first in every fixture and qualifier across those two seasons. He recently took two golds at the AIS League and two silvers at Junior Race Night, and trains with the elite squad at Ultimate Athletics, where his 80m best of 11.06 seconds is a club under-12 record. Inspired by Italian Olympic champion Marcell Jacobs, he hopes to represent Italy one day and race at the Olympic Games.
The family bought their home in DAMAC Hills 2 just over a year ago, after years in company accommodation.
“Before, you never felt completely at home,” his father, an Airbus A380 pilot, says. “Now, step by step, we are making it ours. I consider that I have two homes – Italy and here.”
He describes the community as a mini city. “There is everything here: the water park, the sports facilities. If you really want, you don’t need to go outside.”
Where the habit lives
The real test of any 30-day challenge is day 31. For these residents, the answer is built into where they live.
DAMAC, the largest private developer in the UAE and Middle East, has delivered 50,000 homes over two decades, with another 55,000 under development. Behind those figures are morning runs, training sessions and school-day sprints, taking shape in neighbourhoods that were handed over and have since come to life.
“Dubai has held some of my greatest victories and my most vulnerable moments,” says Philippe. “I am here to stay, and I wouldn’t have it any other way.”
Source: Khaleej Times