The cream of the UAE's young sailing talent are being primed for a big effort in next week's Dubai Junior Regatta when they will be pursuing top honours during an intense series against the world's best.
Competition will be fierce in the Emirates Airline-sponsored event which is attracting the rising stars of sailing from 21 other countries, but the UAE national team is ready to take on all challengers.
They may still lack the in-depth race experience of youngsters in other countries which have been preparing world and Olympic champions from grass roots for decades, but the 21-strong UAE squad is packed with potential and overflowing with enthusiasm.
"We've come a long way in a very short period of time," said Sid Bensalah, the regatta chairman and sailing manager at Dubai International Marine Club, which is now seeing the benefits of the youth sailing programme it launched five years ago.
One of the products of the programme, Yousef Bin Lahej, last year became the first UAE national to qualify for an Olympic sailing event and is now skippering a UAE crew in the newly-launched Maktoum Sailing Trophy.
Another, Adel Khalid, won the Laser 4.7 title at the 1993 European Championships and goes into next week's Dubai Junior Regatta aiming to improve on his fourth place overall last year.
When Bensalah arrived in Dubai in 1998 as coach of the Algerian team during the ISAF World Championship, he was hugely impressed with the facilities he found, by the development taking place in Dubai, and the plans unveiled to him by DIMC managing director and regatta chief executive, Saeed Hareb.
"DIMC had been established by the Government to promote water sports and at the same time promote Dubai and the UAE as a whole, as a tourist destination, and this has been a very successful project," said Bensalah.
"When I was asked to come here and help launch the youth sailing programme, we started from zero because there was no national team and virtually no young nationals taking part in the sport. After establishing a national team we worked with Rashid School and Jebel Ali Primary School to introduce sailing into their sports programmes."
