The meet finally starts tomorrow! I have been looking forward to competing at this meet for quite some time. I will jump right into the meet with the 100 breaststroke on the first morning. The prelims start at 10 am and the finals at 7:00 pm (GMT + 4 hours) which is 9 hours ahead of East Coast Time.

My preparation has been focused mostly on sharpening up my turns, pullouts, and dives. The new track start blocks also provide a bit of a challenge just because I do not usually practice on them, but I am much more comfortable with them now and have perfected my angle of entry and depth on the dive. My stroke is coming together nicely and I feel very loose yet strong in the water. Tomorrow’s race will be very important for me to put up a very fast time in the non-seeded heats to advance to the semis that night.

Schedule of the events I will be swimming this meet:
Dec 15th – 100 br prelims, 100 br semis* (at night)
Dec 16th – 100 br finals* (at night)
Dec 17th – 200 br prelims, 200 br finals* (at night)
Dec 18th – 50 br prelims, 50 br semis* (at night)
Dec 19th – 400 medley relay prelims, 50 br finals* & 400 medley relay finals* (at night)
*based on prelim or semi advancement

Live Omega results: http://www.omegatiming.com/swimming/racearchives/2010/WSC_DUBAI/WSC_DUBAI_d1.htm

The Canadian team is a smaller team with only 16 athletes, and only 7 males, but should still do some damage with many great swimmers. It was also great to run into my old Stanford teammates Bobby Bollier (USA), Dave Dunford (Kenya), and Jason Dunford (Kenya) and I wish them the best. I am not sure of the tv coverage in the US or Canada, but if someone knows anything, just post a comment below so everyone can see as well.

I will try to update during the meet if I can, but my focus will be fully on swimming fast and preparing for my next races. Thank you again for all your support and prayers!

-Paul

Today, I stood in the tallest man-made structure ever built. Man’s attempt to reach the skies measures 828 meters high (2717 ft). In comparison, the second tallest freestanding structure, the CN Tower in Toronto, spans 553 meters. The Burj has 160 floors and the whole structure is about 200 stories tall.

The observation deck they brought us to was only on the 124th floor (452 m), but included an amazing outdoor section where you could see up to 95 km on a clear day (but today was foggy unfortunately). The elevator took only 1 minute to go up 124 stories averaging around 10 m/s while reaching speeds of 18 m/s, but it was very smooth and you would have no idea you were going so high if it weren’t for the changing pressures in your ears.

This incredible engineering feat cost $1.5 billion US dollars to build and has too many world records to go over. It does have the highest swimming pool in the world on the 76th floor though. The Khalifa is part of a bigger ‘Downtown Dubai’ project that is costing around $20 billion dollars. If you are really into structural engineering, definitely check out one of the shows about the construction of the tower on the Discovery Channel or National Geographic.

After scaling the tower, we headed to the Dubai Mall, not shockingly, the world’s largest indoor shopping mall with has over 1200 shops. It has every store you could think of and you could find in your local mall in Canada or the US. Annamey Pierse and I headed straight to the huge aquarium which holds over 10 million liters of water, the world’s largest of course, and then the world’s largest candy store. Yes, I am pretty sure the government of Dubai got ahold of the Guinness Book of world records in the year 2000 and then went out to try to break as many of them as they could.

The Burj Khalifa probably will not be out built for a number of years and is a magnificent architectural feat, but still pales in comparison to standing on top of a mountain overlooking other breathtaking mountains, forests, lakes, and valleys. Nothing can compare to the natural beauty of this earth and the creation that was here before we came along. Mt. Everest reaches 8,848 m high which is more than ten times the height of Khalifa. I have stood on man’s best attempt to reach the skies, and although it is an incredible feat, man will never surpass God’s creation.

Dubai: The bankrupt, city of gold. The Westernized, melting pot. The oil-rich, tourist-dependant city.

Dubai is an amazing city that I have been looking forward to visiting ever since I found out the World Championships were going to be held there. Since landing in the Dubai airport, one of the busiest international airports in the world, I immediately noticed that all signs were in Arabic and English. On the way back to the hotel that night, all the road signs were also in English. I didn’t think going to a Middle Eastern country that everyone would be able to speak English.

My impressions of Dubai beforehand was that it was an oil-rich city and emirate that just had so much money that they decided to go crazy and build huge buildings and architectural feats with their money to create a longer lasting economy and attractions for their nation. I was kinda right. They are home to the Burj Khalifa, the worlds tallest building at 828 meters, the Burb Al Arab, the world’s only ‘7-star’ hotel, and many man-made islands shaped like the world or a giant palm tree. The city is also nicknamed the city of gold because of their Gold Souq, which are markets littered with gold jewelery attracting lots of tourists. As of 2007, it was the 8th most visited city in the world for tourism and is the shopping capital of the Middle East.

But, Dubai’s economy is not what it used to be. The government decided to diversify from a trade-based, port city, oil-reliant economy to one more tourism-oriented and focused on financial markets. This let to major property appreciation in 2004-2006 and led to large scale real estate developments like I listed above. However, Dubai was hit extremely hard in the world-wide recession of 2008-2009 and property depreciation hit record lows and the emirate went into major debt taking a major toll on property values, construction, and employment. Last year, the emirate of Abu Dhabi bailed out Dubai an estimated $80 billion dollars.

As a result of this recession, all over the city of Dubai are these half constructed buildings and communities. For every built skyscraper, there seems to be an abandoned one half-built right next to it. With time, the property values might go back up and construction continue, but for now, there seems to be a halting of all construction. The 2013 LC World Swimming Championships were supposed to be held in Dubai as well, but the city had to withdraw their bid because of their financial situation.

Some of you may know, but I spent four years of my childhood growing up in the Middle East in Dharan, Saudi Arabia. Coming back to Dubai has reminded me a lot of my childhood experiences there and the Arabian culture. However, Dubai was much more Westernized than I ever thought it would. I thought it would be exactly like Saudi Arabia in terms of being governed by Islamic law, dress code, cuisine, hate for ‘Americans’, etc., but it is the opposite in many respects. Saudi Arabia does its best to not let any foreigners into its land while Dubai embraces tourism and western thought. Saudi is governed strictly by Islamic Law and all other religions are prohibited while Dubai is a melting pot of Islam, Christian, Hindu, etc. Dubai has only around 18% of their population as native emirates, with over half of their population coming from India. English is Dubai’s working language. Islamic dress code is not compulsory like Saudi where women could not show any skin, drive a car, or own property. I could go on and on about differences and comparisons, but just wanted to point the vast differences in my mind that I had thought all Middle Eastern countries had shared to an extent. Saudi Arabia is still a very closed society to western influence, while Dubai has embraced themselves as the western hub of the Middle East.

There is much more I want to visit and see in the city. So far, the people are most friendly and courteous. It will be very interesting to see what kind of crowds turn out for the meet as I am pretty sure men in briefs and women in bathing suits still goes against their dress-code etiquette. The city is truly remarkable and I look forward to seeing man’s most remarkable feat to date: Burj Khalifa – the world’s tallest manmade structure. Stay tuned tomorrow for a brief writeup about it.

I wanted to share my experience in Dubai with everyone as I get ready for the 10th FINA Short Course World Swimming Championships this December 15-19th. I will be representing Canada in the breaststroke events starting with the 100 meter breaststroke on the first day of competition on Wednesday, December 15th.

It has been an exciting journey for me this year as I have committed my next few years to pursuing my swimming passion and dreams full-time training in Calgary, Alberta, Canada with the University of Calgary Swim Club under Jan Bidrman. This training has been going very well and I hope to show the world this week what I can do on the international stage. My times from 2009 ranked in the top 10 all-time for scm, and I set 4 Canadian, 2 Commonwealth, and 1 World Record last year in the breaststroke events and 400 medley relay. I hope to carry that success into the meet this week with some very fast times and final swims.

You can find all the meet information and results on this page: http://www.dubaiswimming2010.ae/

I will be getting into some more posts here shortly about the city of Dubai, the amazing aquatic center, Burj Khalifa, and my race preparation. Thank you very kindly for all your support, thoughts, and prayers as I prepare for these championships. Please share this page with anyone who is interested in following my journey.

-Paul Kornfeld