After his mighty swim, the 15-year-old winner staggered upright in the mid-morning sun on the Corniche Beach, and for just a blip I thought he looked disoriented.
I thought he might topple. I thought he might forget he still had to sprint the rest of the way ashore to complete the race. I thought I heard my inner voice urging, "Please hurry, lad!"
It turned out I was wrong, of course, because it emerged that young Amr Ahmed is a savvy veteran of myriad waters and has outsized dreams but just one basic human problem after swimming 200 metres in admirable earnest.
"I took my breath because I felt like vomiting," he said.
For elaboration: "I drank a lot of seawater. The first lap I think I drank the most. I swam fast and when I swim fast I drink a lot of water, but I ignored it."
You could have carried home bountiful images from the abundant competitions at the inaugural Abu Dhabi Swimming Festival yesterday. From the rooster hours of the morning came a vivid procession of exertion.
From the mile race through to the dashes, there were swimmers normally found in pools taking a turn in the mildly wild. There were rationally ambitious youths such as mile winners Velimir Stjepanovic and Megan Mileham.
There were nimble children and their - (cough) - less-nimble, relay-partner parents. There were people of a certain vintage who placed commendably in the gruel.
And there was Ahmed, from Egypt, who stood up in the water and halted because he had used every iota of his strength save for the fumes that did let him amble to the finish. For a Saturday morning at 9.30am, it's hard to top that.
"Did you win?" the public-address announcer asked him shortly thereafter.
"Yeah," he whispered, his demanding lungs leaving the answer barely audible even through the microphone.
"How was the race?"
"It's OK," he spluttered, again barely audible.
"How was your the race today?" implored the inquirer. "Brilliant," he finally blurted in near-normal tone.
His lungs finally ceased fussiness enough for a conversation. Like many of his fellow junior swimmers, he took right to the water at a wee age, in his case four. "Like he belonged to the water," said his mother, Samah Youssef.
Like many, he belongs to one of the proliferating swim clubs of the UAE, in his case Al Jazira. "If he continues like this I think he will have a good chance at his dreams," said Hatem Hamed, one of the club's coaches.
Unlike the others, though, Ahmed got some early-life training from an ancient and turbulent teacher, the waters just off Alexandria in Egypt.
There, he raced his first sea race at 12 at the considerably greater distance of two kilometres. He swam hard enough to hurt his right shoulder, drank a bucketload of seawater and finished with such acute focus that he presumed he was well outside the top three even though he had finished second.
"Alexandria is full of waves," he said. "Not only do you have to swim, you have to stop the waves coming to you. You have to know how to swim in the waves so you don't get tired."
In the lamb-like water of Saturday, he applied identical and commendable focus even through a distraction when several of the 24 boys sprinted for the water prematurely and ahead of him.
"For a long distance I put in my head only an image of the buoy," he said.
"I'm trying to go there. I don't think of anything but getting there. If I lose that image, I will lose my concentration."
That is part of how you can finish and stagger a tad, with another part the involuntary consumption of seawater.
"Maybe one litre, two litres," said the coach, Hamed, as Ahmed smiled. "It's nothing."
For acclimation from their usual 50-metre pool at Al Jazira, Hamed brought some of his charges including his winning Under 11s to the beach on Friday.
While the salt does buoy them more than the chlorine, he said, they must learn to take front-facing breaths for proper direction, or side breaths when parallel to the beach.
It adds another layer of experience as Ahmed, for one of many at the Corniche, has the skyward daydreams that make life go. He wants to "get known in Egypt as a good swimmer", to get a university scholarship, to represent Egypt in the Olympics. Multiply his full-on effort by a few hundred and you have a full-on event. And when you have an inaugural event seeking traction, you can do far worse than ambitious teens teetering briefly with stomachs full of seawater.
[ cculpepper@thenational.ae ]
Company Profile
Company name: Namara
Started: June 2022
Founder: Mohammed Alnamara
Based: Dubai
Sector: Microfinance
Current number of staff: 16
Investment stage: Series A
Investors: Family offices
It's Monty Python's Crashing Rocket Circus
To the theme tune of the famous zany British comedy TV show, SpaceX has shown exactly what can go wrong when you try to land a rocket.
The two minute video posted on YouTube is a compilation of crashes and explosion as the company, created by billionaire Elon Musk, refined the technique of reusable space flight.
SpaceX is able to land its rockets on land once they have completed the first stage of their mission, and is able to resuse them multiple times - a first for space flight.
But as the video, How Not to Land an Orbital Rocket Booster, demonstrates, it was a case if you fail, try and try again.
About Seez
Company name/date started: Seez, set up in September 2015 and the app was released in August 2017
Founder/CEO name(s): Tarek Kabrit, co-founder and chief executive, and Andrew Kabrit, co-founder and chief operating officer
Based in: Dubai, with operations also in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Lebanon
Sector: Search engine for car buying, selling and leasing
Size: (employees/revenue): 11; undisclosed
Stage of funding: $1.8 million in seed funding; followed by another $1.5m bridge round - in the process of closing Series A
Investors: Wamda Capital, B&Y and Phoenician Funds
Bombshell
Director: Jay Roach
Stars: Nicole Kidman, Charlize Theron, Margot Robbie
Four out of five stars
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
UAE currency: the story behind the money in your pockets
Our family matters legal consultant
Name: Hassan Mohsen Elhais
Position: legal consultant with Al Rowaad Advocates and Legal Consultants.
Sweet Tooth
Creator: Jim Mickle
Starring: Christian Convery, Nonso Anozie, Adeel Akhtar, Stefania LaVie Owen
Rating: 2.5/5
MADAME WEB
Director: S.J. Clarkson
Starring: Dakota Johnson, Tahar Rahim, Sydney Sweeney
Rating: 3.5/5
Tips for SMEs to cope
- Adapt your business model. Make changes that are future-proof to the new normal
- Make sure you have an online presence
- Open communication with suppliers, especially if they are international. Look for local suppliers to avoid delivery delays
- Open communication with customers to see how they are coping and be flexible about extending terms, etc
Courtesy: Craig Moore, founder and CEO of Beehive, which provides term finance and working capital finance to SMEs. Only SMEs that have been trading for two years are eligible for funding from Beehive.
COMPANY PROFILE
Company name: BorrowMe (BorrowMe.com)
Date started: August 2021
Founder: Nour Sabri
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: E-commerce / Marketplace
Size: Two employees
Funding stage: Seed investment
Initial investment: $200,000
Investors: Amr Manaa (director, PwC Middle East)
COMPANY PROFILE
Company name: Almouneer
Started: 2017
Founders: Dr Noha Khater and Rania Kadry
Based: Egypt
Number of staff: 120
Investment: Bootstrapped, with support from Insead and Egyptian government, seed round of
$3.6 million led by Global Ventures
Key figures in the life of the fort
Sheikh Dhiyab bin Isa (ruled 1761-1793) Built Qasr Al Hosn as a watchtower to guard over the only freshwater well on Abu Dhabi island.
Sheikh Shakhbut bin Dhiyab (ruled 1793-1816) Expanded the tower into a small fort and transferred his ruling place of residence from Liwa Oasis to the fort on the island.
Sheikh Tahnoon bin Shakhbut (ruled 1818-1833) Expanded Qasr Al Hosn further as Abu Dhabi grew from a small village of palm huts to a town of more than 5,000 inhabitants.
Sheikh Khalifa bin Shakhbut (ruled 1833-1845) Repaired and fortified the fort.
Sheikh Saeed bin Tahnoon (ruled 1845-1855) Turned Qasr Al Hosn into a strong two-storied structure.
Sheikh Zayed bin Khalifa (ruled 1855-1909) Expanded Qasr Al Hosn further to reflect the emirate's increasing prominence.
Sheikh Shakhbut bin Sultan (ruled 1928-1966) Renovated and enlarged Qasr Al Hosn, adding a decorative arch and two new villas.
Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan (ruled 1966-2004) Moved the royal residence to Al Manhal palace and kept his diwan at Qasr Al Hosn.
Sources: Jayanti Maitra, www.adach.ae
AUSTRALIA SQUAD v SOUTH AFRICA
Aaron Finch (capt), Shaun Marsh, Travis Head, Chris Lynn, Glenn Maxwell, D'Arcy Short, Marcus Stoinis, Alex Carey, Ashton Agar, Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood, Pat Cummins, Nathan Coulter-Nile, Adam Zampa
RESULTS
6.30pm Al Maktoum Challenge Round-2 – Group 1 (PA) $49,000 (Dirt) 1,900m
Winner RB Frynchh Dude, Pat Cosgrave (jockey), Helal Al Alawi (trainer)
7.05pm Al Bastakiya Trial – Conditions (TB) $50,000 (D) 1,900m
Winner El Patriota, Vagner Leal, Antonio Cintra
7.40pm Zabeel Turf – Listed (TB) $88,000 (Turf) 2,000m
Winner Ya Hayati, Mickael Barzalona, Charlie Appleby
8.15pm Cape Verdi – Group 2 (TB) $163,000 (T) 1,600m
Winner Althiqa, James Doyle, Charlie Appleby
8.50pm UAE 1000 Guineas – Listed (TB) $125,000 (D) 1,600m
Winner Soft Whisper, Frankie Dettori, Saeed bin Suroor
9.25pm Handicap (TB) $68,000 (T) 1,600m
Winner Bedouin’s Story, Frankie Dettori, Saeed bin Suroor
TWISTERS
Director: Lee Isaac Chung
Starring: Glenn Powell, Daisy Edgar-Jones, Anthony Ramos
Rating: 2.5/5
ELECTION RESULTS
Macron’s Ensemble group won 245 seats.
The second-largest group in parliament is Nupes, a leftist coalition led by Jean-Luc Melenchon, which gets 131 lawmakers.
The far-right National Rally fared much better than expected with 89 seats.
The centre-right Republicans and their allies took 61.
Buy farm-fresh food
The UAE is stepping up its game when it comes to platforms for local farms to show off and sell their produce.
In Dubai, visit Emirati Farmers Souq at The Pointe every Saturday from 8am to 2pm, which has produce from Al Ammar Farm, Omar Al Katri Farm, Hikarivege Vegetables, Rashed Farms and Al Khaleej Honey Trading, among others.
In Sharjah, the Aljada residential community will launch a new outdoor farmers’ market every Friday starting this weekend. Manbat will be held from 3pm to 8pm, and will host 30 farmers, local home-grown entrepreneurs and food stalls from the teams behind Badia Farms; Emirates Hydroponics Farms; Modern Organic Farm; Revolution Real; Astraea Farms; and Al Khaleej Food.
In Abu Dhabi, order farm produce from Food Crowd, an online grocery platform that supplies fresh and organic ingredients directly from farms such as Emirates Bio Farm, TFC, Armela Farms and mother company Al Dahra.
Al Jazira's foreign quartet for 2017/18
Romarinho, Brazil
Lassana Diarra, France
Sardor Rashidov, Uzbekistan
Mbark Boussoufa, Morocco
Company profile
Name: Cashew
Started: 2020
Founders: Ibtissam Ouassif and Ammar Afif
Based: Dubai, UAE
Industry: FinTech
Funding size: $10m
Investors: Mashreq, others
'Falling for Christmas'
Director: Janeen Damian
Stars: Lindsay Lohan, Chord Overstreet, Jack Wagner, Aliana Lohan
Rating: 1/5
The National in Davos
We are bringing you the inside story from the World Economic Forum's Annual Meeting in Davos, a gathering of hundreds of world leaders, top executives and billionaires.