Doha rising

Qatar has never seen snow but has one of the world’s best ice hockey rinks; it does not play field hockey much but has 30-odd clubs; with the 2022 FIFA World Cup in bag, it has also bid for the Olympics. MEENAKSHI RAO, who attended the high-profile Doha Goals Summit recently, tells you about the stunning journey of a small nation to the top echelons of the globe’s sporting corridors.

I was escorted into Doha’s pride — the Aspire Zone — by a refreshingly young girl all the way from my hometown in India, Nellore. If that was not a surprise in itself, the sprawling media centre was being attended to by a French girl who said she was from Lyon. The chief delegates, meanwhile, were being cordoned off from the media and others by a stunning White girl. “Are you from Russia?” I asked tentatively. “No, I am from Latin America, from Honduras to be exact,” she said with a beaming smile.
My surprise was all too evident. “So you must be working for the Richard Attias Group and are here for the Doha Goals Summit,” I presumed. “No, this is my home, I live and work here,” she said. “All the way from Honduras to Qatar, isn’t it a strange journey?” I persisted. “I’ve been here for six years now. The work and salaries are unheard of in the outside world. The living standards are high. The peace is uncanny and the safety of women no issue at all. So when I got this offer, I jumped at it, especially when I came to know one doesn’t even have to pay any kind of tax,” she said, explaining how Doha has more foreigners than locals and how the work force comes from all corners of the world, with Indians having a lion’s share of 20 per cent.
I also met a big number of British nationals, Americans and even some Chinese and Indonesian people, settled here for work. Headquarters to the legendary Al Jazeera media conglomerate and the world number three in gas reserves, Qatar is now coming up as the most exciting, detailed, well-equipped sporting destination on globe, a journey many view with awe and bewilderment. After all, which developing nation focuses its progress chart on propelling sport? Qatar does, and it is unique in this mission.
Consider this: A desert nation eons away from snow, is host to the ice hockey world league competition with state-of-the-art ice rinks in the heart of Doha. It does not play field hockey much either but boasts of over 30 clubs; cricket is alien to it and yet there is a stunning cricketing stadium which awaits a grand inaugural with a world class tournament to be held here in 2014.
Also consider this: Qatar, a desert emirate with not more than 1.7 million residents, does not levy any kind of income tax on its subjects. Water and electricity are in abundance and come free to every home, office or corporate enterprise. Public education is free too. The country itself has scripted an unbelievable rags-to-riches story in the last two centuries to come up as the world’s richest nation with the highest per capita income of $88,222 a year, according to an IMF estimate.
The nation’s sovereign wealth fund, the Qatar Investment Authority, had a recorded asset overflow of $60 billion in 2010 itself. And its stated strategy is to minimise the nation’s dependence on energy prices. With that in mind, it has invested in solid assets, buying well-known properties and enterprises all across the world, besides owning stakes in global financial institutions, universities and multinational companies, not to mention, its most audacious but winning bid to date — hosting the 2022 FIFA World Cup amid the surprise and criticism of the Western world wary of not just an Arab environ not suited for a sport like football but also of the heat and dust it will get enveloped it.
But Qatar is not bothered. It has the wherewithal to blow away every bit of doubt with a development programme which promises to make the world gape. Here is what the sports-enthusiastic Emir of Qatar has planned for 2022: To beat the heat of expected 50 degrees Celsius his desert nation reaches normally in the month of June-July when the World Cup is to be held, it plans to condition the air in 100 per cent of the areas where the tournament will be played out.
Doting on its now legendary natural gas and liquid petroleum reserves of approximately 896 trillion cubic feet (second only Russia and Iran), it plans to use jet propellers, usually meant for rockets, to cool down the temperatures by more than 20 degrees in an open air stadium where the finale will be held. The hotel-to-stadium-to-hotel tunnels will be many and all air-conditioned. Other stadia will be closed and temperature controlled, and even the open fan zones will be under cover of massive air-conditioners.
The World Cup will be staged in 12 future-inspired venues, such as the dhow-shaped Al-Shamal, just 30 minutes from Bahrain by water taxi, and the futuristic Al-Wakrah Sports Complex. And once the grand show gets over, some of these stadia will be folded up and sent to Third World nations to boost their sporting infrastructure and hone their gaming acumen so that competition at world events like the Olympics get an increased podium presence of smaller nations.
Please note, for these two beautiful stadia, a whole new city has been made up on reclaimed land Lusail. This is Qatar’s under-construction coast pearl located 15 km north of Doha, on over 35 km replete with marinas, residential areas, island resorts, commercial districts, luxury shopping and leisure facilities, including two golf courses and an entertainment entertainment district. The Lusail Iconic Stadium, with a capacity of 86,250, will host the opening and final matches of FIFA World Cup. The stadium takes its inspiration from the sail of a traditional dhow boat and is surrounded by water.
But, this wow element is far away into the future. For now, Qatar has emerged as the sports capital of the world, an effort that seems strange for an Arab nation to employ in its bid become a world power. Though many would disdainfully dismiss the possibility of a sporting showcase being taken seriously at world forums, fact is that the Emir and his vision have brought in a round of applause to his emirate from myriad powers of the world.
The recent Doha Summit Goals, a conclave of thinkers which debated the propulsion of sports as a tool to bringing equality, economic well-being and peace to nations of the world, was not just a million-dollar obsession of the royal family, but a ploy to get Qatar to be noticed worldwide.
Preceded by the World Climate Talks just a few days before, the Doha Goals Summit brought to Qatar’s debating table greats from all walks of sporting life. From two Heads of States from Africa, to former French President Nicholas Sarkozy, to top former athletes like Carl Lewis, Ian Thorpe and Mark Spitz to name a few, top sport physicians and WADA science director, to NGOs and institutions propelling sports in their respective countries, to the world media — anyone and everyone who should have been there was flown in to talk about the next big step to be taken to make sports a subject of serious political discourse worldwide.
The summit, slated to return next year to Doha, also sketched a roadmap to implement the 300 bold initiatives thrown up by 3,000 delegates to make sport a tool of social change and economic development worldwide.
Even if one were to speculate over the viability of such a summit in real terms, Qatar has already made its presence felt with a whopping 320 days of national and international sporting events happening in one calendar year of 365 days.
Seeing the opulence around its stunning sporting infrastructure, the Aspire Zone — spread in a few kilometre circular area in the heart of the capital city — one would wonder what’s with this sporting obsession of an average Qatari. After all, it has only three bronze medals as its best tally ever in the Olympics, it is not too high on the footballing global network and its athletes are nowhere near the finish line in big world events.
Still, it is bewildering how Qatar has the most moneyed sporting leagues on the globe, that too in games which the nation is not too familiar with. No less than 30 clubs compete at its annual hockey tournament and the Qatar club stood second in the just-concluded world hockey league, behind Azerbaijan. The same goes for its cricket league and that despite the fact that cricket is for Qataris what it is for the Chinese or, for that matter, the Americans.
A clutch of former Team India players plays for these local hockey clubs which are also dotted by Pakistanis, Malaysians and Qataris. The earnings are not mean at all in both sports which are, by the way, alien to Qatar whose DNA is more into football than any other game.
Talking of which, ‘Sport is in our DNA,’ says a lifesize poster at the chic Aspire Zone, a circle of intense activity which has come to signify a nation’s unique effort to edify all kinds of sport — some known and many unknown to this desert country.
As you walk around this zone where you see localites playing, walking and jogging in the evenings you know that the implementation of its Emir’s big dream of instilling physical activity as a way of life in his population is alive and kicking. The Aspire Zone, with its signature Torch building rising up from the sands of time, is Doha’s most happening sporting mile with facilities like the state-of-the-art WADA anti-doping lab rubbing shoulders with a sports medicine academy, a sporting institution to garner young guns into top achievers in sports, not to mention a clutch of indoor stadiums in most sports, used to capacity during the 2006 Asian Games held here.
Pointing out how when people speak about Qatar, they often focus on its considerable natural resources, Sarkozy drew attention towards how Qatar is in the midst of addressing “one of the trickiest questions of the 21st century: Reconciling national identity with modernity. In sport, as envisaged and promoted by Qatar, one sees how we can accept the complementarities, the dovetailing of identity and modernity,” he said while addressing the Doha Goals Summit.
The summit, produced and directed by the Richard Attias Group on a $5 million budget, is only one pointer to how this Arab nation has made sports its raison d’etre. Pointing out how sporting initiatives overcome borders and contribute to building societies, His Highness Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, Emir of Qatar recalled it was his family’s dream since 1979 to make Qatar a world destination for sporting activities. “Youth are our wealth and together we can build a better future.  The Arab region is about to change profoundly, and the Arab Spring has proved our youth have dreams and ambitions too,” he stressed.
The Emir said Qatar had made huge investment in sports facilities based on the conviction that sport had the ability to promote development in the country and the fact that the hosting of international events not only provided entertainment but also played a role in providing jobs, both locally and internationally.
He also stressed that the decision by FIFA to award Qatar the 2022 Football World Cup championship was in part determined by a joint commitment to boost stability and development in the whole Middle East region.
Thanks to these efforts, infrastructure developments at home and sporting investments overseas have fired the imagination, including the purchase of the leading French football club Paris Saint-Germain and a UAE-Qatar joint partnership working on the world’s first-ever extreme sports park.
The results of a $2.8 billion infrastructure investment include the Qatar MotoGP track; the five-floor ultra-modern Hamad Aquatic Centre and the iconic Aspire Dome, from which the Emir launched the Aspire Academy’s Football Dreams Project.
For the past seven years, the project has been scouting more than two million youth footballers from across the globe — one of the many factors that helped secure Qatar’s bid to host the 2022 World Cup.
The QOC is responsible for the administrative and technical supervision over Qatar’s sports federations and sports establishments numbering 24 federations and sporting establishments, 10 premier league clubs and six second league clubs, for which the Committee has provided all human and material support in order to further their ability to carry out their missions. It also supervises the all-girls sports committee and has even made a bid for the Olympics after getting the 2022 FIFA Cup in the bag.
The only glitch of this sport and gas El Dorado? It has the dubious distinction of being the world’s highest carbon emission rate in the world. Considering, however, that it can cool temperatures with rocket propellers, it can freeze ice in the middle of a desert and it can bring world class players to populate their country, is proof enough that somewhere down the line they will also plug its environment lacuna. Till then...
Source: Published in Sunday Pioneer, 6 January, 2013 


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