DUBAI Three UAE-based Arab athletes will be on a mission when they compete in the Standard Chartered Dubai Marathon on January 22. Popularly known as Omni Athletes, the team will run to raise funds for ‘Seeing is Believing,’ a Standard Chartered global initiative to tackle avoidable blindness.
In the run-up to the event, the Omni Athletes are performing endurance challenges encouraging residents in the UAE to join them and support the cause. “We are delighted to be part of this initiative. It’s a big project that supports millions of people around the world. We are encouraging people to run different distances and be a part of our initiative,” said 35-year-old Moustapha Mroueh, a finance director with Visa Middle East.
“We are also promoting the need to lead a healthy lifestyle and maintain good habits. We keep meeting new people at the training sessions who are getting to know about our initiative through friends and social media and are willing to join us. There has been tremendous support,” added Mroueh, who has run 11 marathons and 3 ultra-marathons. His brother Mazen Mroueh, 30, is a performance and programmatic manager with Starcom who has completed 17 marathons and one ultra-marathon. The third in the team is 35-year-old Dani Afiouni, a regional director, Consumer Engagement and Media at PepsiCo MEA and has nine marathons and one ultra-marathon to his credit.
“We are a fantastic team with diverse backgrounds. We are passionate about running and as we began doing it professionally we wanted to do something different. That’s when we started running for charity. We have raised over $200,000 for treatment of underprivileged kids suffering from cancer in the region. It feels great when you visit the kids who have been completely cured from the money raised,” said Moustapha.
The team has achieved a world record after successfully accomplishing the 7 Continents Challenge.
They completed a full distance marathon on each continent in only 11 days, breaking the existing world record of 21 days.
The challenge started on February 8 last year in Melbourne, then travelled to Abu Dhabi, Paris, Tunisia, New York, Chile and completed in Antarctica on February 19.
“For the last run we had to wait for four days since we could not reach the place due to bad weather. We are delighted to have completed the big challenge. Now we are looking at running the North Pole Marathon. If we complete it, we will be the first Arab group to achieve both the feats (7 Continents Challenge and North Pole Marathon).
