Sports Up High
If you have a fear of heights, we will totally understand if you want to skip out on the tennis game. This impressive modern engineering wonder is connected to the Burj al Arab hotel and stands around 1,000 feet off the ground. Can you imagine how many balls have been lost during all the matches held here? Should you watch a game here, you will not want to fall off the perch! However, the truth is that people no longer play tennis in this court. It was opened as part of a publicity stunt ahead of the 2005 Dubai Duty-Free Men’s Open tournament. The court might have been temporary, but it nonetheless made for a great location for this photo op of tennis greats Roger Federer and Andre Agassi. They eventually turned it back into the helipad that it originally was.
Sports Up High
New Camel Jockeys
Camel racing might be an ancient tradition, but the sport got an upgrade in 2004. In Dubai, they used robots to replace the human jockeys. The motivation behind the modern move was to prevent human rights violations since it is common in Gulf countries to have children serve as camel jockeys. In the UAE and Qatar, they decided to ban the use of human jockeys and use robots instead. The UAE, where Dubai is located, was the first country to do this in an effort to get rid of child abuse and slavery. You might not know about it, but camel racing is actually a multi-million dollar industry right now.
New Camel Jockeys