My Super Sweet Sports Sixteen: Sheikh Edition

First a little geography. The Persian Gulf is in the middle east, and serves as basically part of the US interstate highway system for USN aircraft carriers. As these behemoths of military might cruise northward on the ever so scenic journey toward Kuwait, the sports havens of the United Arab Emirates, Qatar, and Bahrain are all buzzing with activity right off the port bow. Bahrain and Qatar are separate entities, while the UAE is a conglomerate of seven emirates, the two most famous (and rich) being Dubai and Abu Dhabi. The president of these always comes from the Al Maktoum clan of Dubai.

The region in question

My Super Sweet Sports Sixteen, Sheikh Edition

As I'm sure many of you have heard, the Persian Gulf is a pretty crazy place. At one end, we have a nightmarish war that the SofC won't even begin to get involved in, and then at the other end you have the craziest shit sports have ever seen, which SofC very much wants to be a part of. The really wild part is that it's not that far between the two. From the dead center of Baghdad (using Google ruler) to the farthest point in the MSSSS,SE (My Super Sweet Sport Sixteen, Sheikh Edition) Dubai, its 850 miles. From the Persian port of Basrha, Iraq's southern most point, its only 260 miles to Bahrain!

So, we've established that this is one of the most stable regions to try and build a thriving tourism trade, with such luminary neighbors as Saudi Arabia and Iran that might pop over for a spot of tea at any moment. Oh, and I can't stop yet, because there are so many environmental issues to think about, like, what if the emissions from all these car races and development really do help burn a hole in the ozone that will cause the sea level to rise and all that beautiful stuff you built at sea level (the world, the palms, indoor skiing, the entirety of the region) will, lets just say that we better get a good show out of it all sooner rather than later.

Ski Dubai, the indoor winter sports complex

My Super Sweet Sixteen?

But lets take a look at the MSSSS,SE aspect. If you haven't seen the MTV show, My Super Sweet Sixteen, you may feel a little in the dark, (if you have seen it, skip to the next paragraph) and by no means should you go watch it to find out what I'm talking about, It will rot your brain. So the idea is that they go around and find fabulously wealthy families with spoiled rotten beyond belief kids and they do reality episodes about planing their "sweet sixteen" birthday. Much disgusting demanding ensues that results in dads buying just about anything you can imagine to make said terror happy. This seems entirely plausible, because most 16 years olds have accomplished a variety of great things in their long lives that deserve to be celebrated with Lamborghinis, tigers, and mansions.

The punch line being, basically the Persian Gulf looks like a Sweet Sixteen party for cash rich sports fans. We all knew that there were a lot of rich as shit sheiks in the region, but it wasn't until now that we knew they were such sports nuts. You can imagine the conversation between Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahayan, president of the United Arab Emirates, and his contractor. (insert spoiled Spaulding voice from Caddyshack) "I wanna world cup soccer stadium, i wanna have the richest horse race in the world, I wanna have a F1 race, I wanna have my own race series, I wanna have a ski hill, I wanna water park, I wanna seven star hotel, etc etc)" Thing is, when your the boss of the UAE, you get all that, and he did.

Downtown Dubai

The Spoiled Children

This type of activity seems pretty normal though in the region, and Bahrain, Qatar, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai all seem hell bent on beating each other and having the best MSSSS,SE. First it was Dubai building their Sports City, complete with FIA sanctioned  soccer pitch, cricket stadium, horse racing arena, indoor ski hill, A1 Grand Prix, and seven star hotel. Bahrain however beat them to the punch with an F1 race, and Qatar decided to go the slightly more economical route of a bike stage race, which Tom Boonen has made his own. When presented with this level of competition, the UAE decided to throw their ace card on the table, Abu Dhabi.

Abu Dhabi's Yas Island, with F1 demo in forground

F1 in Abu Dhabi

Abu Dhabi is supposed to be the crown jewel of the middle east, the Monaco of the sands, so it was almost inevitable that they would convince Bernie an F1 race just had to be there. Last week they finished doing just that, and then held the most over the top race announcement you've ever seen. Some races will get a team or two to show and up say nice things about the future of the event, bring a couple of last year's cars and maybe get some test drivers to do some dough nuts if you're lucky. Abu Dhabi got Red Bull, Maclaren, Ferrari, BMW, Honda, and Renault to show up with their new cars. Not only that they had Kimi, Fernando, Massa and a bunch of other Sunday drivers there. The amount of money this cost them must have been spectacular, for it takes a lot to get these guys to stop important testing in Jerez and fly all their shit to the desert to do burnouts.

Nothing says "its my birthday" like a custom painted jet!

Comments

[ian]

Great post. But this means they are getting rid of Bahrain, right? Because I will slit my wrists if they yank silverstone so we can have two sparsley attended races within 200 miles of each other in the middle of the fucking desert.

[David]

Goodbye Woodcote.

[Snownation]

Nice post. Dubai is amazing, especially the indoor skiing park:

http://www.snownation.com/ski-vacations/23/ski-dubai-igloo-in-the-desert/