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
Name: Almnssa
Started: August 2020
Founder: Areej Selmi
Based: Gaza
Sectors: Internet, e-commerce
Investments: Grants/private funding
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%3Cp%3E%3Cstrong%3ECompany%20name%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EAlmouneer%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EStarted%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%202017%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EFounders%3A%3C%2Fstrong%3E%20Dr%20Noha%20Khater%20and%20Rania%20Kadry%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EBased%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EEgypt%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3ENumber%20of%20staff%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3E120%3Cbr%3E%3Cstrong%3EInvestment%3A%20%3C%2Fstrong%3EBootstrapped%2C%20with%20support%20from%20Insead%20and%20Egyptian%20government%2C%20seed%20round%20of%20%3Cbr%3E%243.6%20million%20led%20by%20Global%20Ventures%3Cbr%3E%3C%2Fp%3E%0A
Game Changer
Director: Shankar
Stars: Ram Charan, Kiara Advani, Anjali, S J Suryah, Jayaram
Rating: 2/5
The biog
Favourite film: The Notebook
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Favourite quote: “Social equality is the only basis of human happiness” Nelson Madela. Hometown: Emmen, The Netherlands
Favourite activities: Walking on the beach, eating at restaurants and spending time with friends
Job: Founder and Managing Director of Mawaheb from Beautiful Peopl
UAE central contracts
Full time contracts
Rohan Mustafa, Ahmed Raza, Mohammed Usman, Chirag Suri, Mohammed Boota, Sultan Ahmed, Zahoor Khan, Junaid Siddique, Waheed Ahmed, Zawar Farid
Part time contracts
Aryan Lakra, Ansh Tandon, Karthik Meiyappan, Rahul Bhatia, Alishan Sharafu, CP Rizwaan, Basil Hameed, Matiullah, Fahad Nawaz, Sanchit Sharma
Dubai Bling season three
Cast: Loujain Adada, Zeina Khoury, Farhana Bodi, Ebraheem Al Samadi, Mona Kattan, and couples Safa & Fahad Siddiqui and DJ Bliss & Danya Mohammed
Rating: 1/5
The Sand Castle
Director: Matty Brown
Stars: Nadine Labaki, Ziad Bakri, Zain Al Rafeea, Riman Al Rafeea
Rating: 2.5/5
2018 ICC World Twenty20 Asian Western Regional Qualifier
The top three teams progress to the Asia Qualifier
Final: UAE beat Qatar by nine wickets
Third-place play-off: Kuwait beat Saudi Arabia by five runs
Table
1 UAE 5 5 0 10
2 Qatar 5 4 1 8
3 Saudi 5 3 2 6
4 Kuwait 5 2 3 4
5 Bahrain 5 1 4 2
6 Maldives 5 0 5 0
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Engine: Direct injection 4-cylinder 1.4-litre
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Paatal Lok season two
Directors: Avinash Arun, Prosit Roy
Stars: Jaideep Ahlawat, Ishwak Singh, Lc Sekhose, Merenla Imsong
Rating: 4.5/5
How to avoid crypto fraud
- Use unique usernames and passwords while enabling multi-factor authentication.
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COMPANY PROFILE
Name: HyperSpace
Started: 2020
Founders: Alexander Heller, Rama Allen and Desi Gonzalez
Based: Dubai, UAE
Sector: Entertainment
Number of staff: 210
Investment raised: $75 million from investors including Galaxy Interactive, Riyadh Season, Sega Ventures and Apis Venture Partners
If you go
Where to stay: Courtyard by Marriott Titusville Kennedy Space Centre has unparalleled views of the Indian River. Alligators can be spotted from hotel room balconies, as can several rocket launch sites. The hotel also boasts cool space-themed decor.
When to go: Florida is best experienced during the winter months, from November to May, before the humidity kicks in.
How to get there: Emirates currently flies from Dubai to Orlando five times a week.
Other workplace saving schemes
- The UAE government announced a retirement savings plan for private and free zone sector employees in 2023.
- Dubai’s savings retirement scheme for foreign employees working in the emirate’s government and public sector came into effect in 2022.
- National Bonds unveiled a Golden Pension Scheme in 2022 to help private-sector foreign employees with their financial planning.
- In April 2021, Hayah Insurance unveiled a workplace savings plan to help UAE employees save for their retirement.
- Lunate, an Abu Dhabi-based investment manager, has launched a fund that will allow UAE private companies to offer employees investment returns on end-of-service benefits.
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Fanney Khan
Producer: T-Series, Anil Kapoor Productions, ROMP, Prerna Arora
Director: Atul Manjrekar
Cast: Anil Kapoor, Aishwarya Rai, Rajkummar Rao, Pihu Sand
Rating: 2/5