Endurance.Net Ridecamp Archives

Just to toss in an obscure socio/political note:  The United Arab 
Emirates are not all that united. Dubai, Abu Dhabi, Sharja, and so on 
are, IN FACT, separate political entities each run by a separate family 
(or at one time a branch of one large family) and each place/society 
has its own flavour.  Therefore, sponsorship by the Endurance Village 
in Abu Dhabi is not the same as sponsorship by, for example only, the 
Maktoum family of Dubai.  The rivalry among the various emirates is 
considerable and each has its own way of pursuing endurance. My 
personal experience from watching the competition here among the 
emirates and following the development of the riders is that Abu Dhabi 
is a fairly good class act, albeit subtlety in advertising is a concept 
rather lost in the Middle East.

As someone who is stationed at the tiny table in the corner of the 
party for Gulf endurance watching the interactions among the major 
players, I think that it's interesting that Abu Dhabi is going after 
the US sponsorships rather than Dubai. If it had been Dubai, you'd have 
seen Emirates Airlines stickers all over everything. As for the 
backwards flags, well, sometimes quality control isn't all that great 
here. I was driving back from town the other day on a road that I don't 
usually take and started giggling hysterically as I passed a sign 
directing me to the Niel River and the Kornish.  Most English-reading 
Cairenes find our road signs immensely amusing, but you wonder why no 
one ever corrects them.

Maryanne
Cairo.

On Thursday, Aug 5, 2004, at 23:36 Africa/Cairo, steph teeter wrote:

> A little background on the UAE sponsorship thing:
>
> The sponsorship is actually coming from the Emirates International
> Endurance Village. This group, representing Endurance in Abu Dhabi and
> under the umbrella of Sheikh Mansoor bin Zayed Al Nahyan chose to
> sponsor two rides in the USA during the 2004 ride season. This is also
> the 'home' of Al Wathba stables, and the President's Cup invitational
> event.


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