A Sports Mecca (Pardon The Expression)

Never mind that they were in the middle of a desert. The grains of sand all around them, microscopically speaking, were too round. Perfect sand traps require angular sand (so that golf balls don’t stick in trap walls but roll to the bottom); angular sand was located and ordered from Saudi Arabia, next door. Trucks were loaded, but they were turned back at the border. For reasons unclear, Saudi Arabia wanted to hold on to that sand. So the builders of the Els Club golf course at Dubai Sports City, a vast sports complex now rising in the round-sand desert, had to settle for their second-choice sand — also from Saudi Arabia, but of a type the Saudis were willing to export.

An oasis of delight: The Dubai Motor City fleshpots. More Photos

It was the only time they settled for second choice in anything.

“Our dedication to providing the best that is available and partnering with excellence is borne out in everything we do,” declares Khalid Abdulrahim Mohammed al-Zarooni, a prominent Dubai businessman and graduate of the University of Nebraska, Omaha, who is the president of Dubai Sports City. Nearing completion on the 50-million-square-foot grounds are a 25,000-seat, state-of-the-art cricket stadium; a 60,000-seat stadium for soccer and rugby; an indoor arena for ice hockey and concerts; a field-hockey venue; a tennis academy; and a Manchester United soccer school. More than 900 villas and town houses — “one of the most luxurious and advanced communities in the world” — are under construction on the fringes of the golf course, to be marketed to Western expats and as vacation homes for rich Middle Easterners (Iran is just 100 miles away). Planned are additional homes and apartments to house 65,000 people, a hospital specializing in sports medicine, a kilometer-long canal and a 230-store shopping mall with “one of the most sensational food courts ever built.”

All of which makes Dubai Sports City, in Dubai terms, a fairly modest endeavor. It’s part of a larger building project called Dubailand that will feature Motor City; Dubai Lifestyle City; Islamic Culture and Science World; and a residential development anchored by replicas of the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal and the Leaning Tower of Pisa. Most of that is still on the drawing board, eventually to join the dozens of brand-new skyscrapers along Sheik Zayed Road, a 12-lane highway perpetually congested with Mercedes-Benzes and Range Rovers. Towering above them all is the Burj Dubai, the world’s tallest building (currently at 159 stories — 1,985 feet — and rising higher, headed toward a final height that remains a secret). From the window of my hotel room in Dubai Media City, I could see 14 new high-rise towers and 24 others under construction. One of those recently completed was a 53-story copy of the Chrysler Building. Next to it was another 53-story copy of the Chrysler Building.

What Dubai once was is still visible in a downtown commercial district filled with low-rise shops and crowds of Indians, Pakistanis, Africans and native Emiratis mingling in every conceivable variety of robe and headdress, where amplified calls to prayer send men running past the Hip Hop clothing emporium and a block of auto-parts stores to shuck their shoes and dash into a washroom marked “The Toilet Only for Muslims” before heading into a mosque to pray. New Dubai has been constructed in what used to be empty desert outside town, in accordance with the frequently cited vision of His Highness Sheik Mohammad Bin Rashid al-Maktoum, the vice president and prime minister of the United Arab Emirates and ruler of Dubai. (That is “ruler” in the sense of no political parties and no real elections, so much nicer than being a mere “decider.”) Sheik Mohammad dreams of using his little country’s billions of oil dollars to turn it into a cross between Singapore, Miami Beach and Las Vegas before the oil runs out. Building the biggest and best of everything has included making the place a world sports Mecca. You should pardon the expression.

A few days before I arrived in late January, the world’s richest marathon was run along Dubai’s Persian Gulf shore. Coming this month is the world’s richest horse race. Next year, the world’s richest golf tournament will debut, a bookend to the annual Dubai Desert Classic that Tiger Woods won (for the second time) a few days after I left. Woods has been a regular in Dubai, possibly tempted by the $3 million he reportedly gets from the Desert Classic just for showing up. He is currently building the world’s first Tiger Woods golf course, in Dubailand.

“With a potential reach of two billion spectators within a four-hour flight zone . . . the U.A.E. is geographically positioned to be a major hub for sporting events,” explains the literature for Dubai Sports City. Plans are to host an annual “flagship” event in each of six sports: soccer, rugby, tennis, golf, field hockey and cricket. Dubai Sports City is spending a million dirhams ($270,000) to import 940 tons of soil from England, Pakistan and Australia for its practice cricket pitches, so teams heading to international matches can rehearse on the surfaces they will be playing on. Dubai has already made a major cricket score, persuading the International Cricket Council to abandon its headquarters at Lord’s Cricket Ground in London after nearly a century and move to Dubai Sports City. The inducements were proximity to the cricket-playing countries of Asia and substantial tax breaks. There are no taxes in Dubai.

For those not seduced by an imitation-Australian cricket pitch, Dubai offers other lures — white-sand beaches, a half-dozen new golf courses, an Autodrome for Grand Prix races, name-chef restaurants, absurdly luxurious hotels and spas and an active disco and bar scene in those hotels (which are exempt from the Islamic ban on alcoholic beverages). Roger Federer has a home in Dubai, and other Western tourists and celebrities are turning up. In January alone, Elton John gave a concert in Abu Dhabi, just down the road; Bill Gates flew in to announce a partnership with the Dubai School of Government; and George W. Bush stopped by for lunch and a tour. George Clooney and Sharon Stone made appearances during the Dubai International Film Festival in December, and Shrek is on his way — a Dreamworks Animation theme park has just been announced for Dubailand.

Ed Zuckerman is an author, journalist and television writer. He reported on the long-distance swimmer Martin Strel in Plays June 2007 issue.

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