Dubai: Organisers are expecting more than 2,000 students from 90-plus schools across Dubai for the fourth edition of the Commercial Bank of Dubai (CBD) Youth Athletics Competition next week.
The fourth edition of the inter-schools competition will get underway with the qualifying events for boys at the Dubai Police Officers Club in Al Garhoud on November 17-18, followed by the preliminary competition for girls on November 24-25. The grand finals for both boys and girls will be held on January 24.
The competition was announced by Murray Sims of CBD in the presence of Dr Haya Ebrahim Bin Saifan, Director, Environment and Events, Dubai Educational Zone and Abdullah Shahdad, from DSC.
This is the fourth year of this competition that has been growing since it was first launched in 2011. Last year’s competition attracted more than 1,800 athletes from 82 schools from across Dubai with the best nearly 500 students from 60 schools qualifying for the grand finale held earlier in 2014.
Held under the patronage of Shaikh Hamdan Bin Mohammad Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Crown Prince of Dubai and Chairman, Dubai Sports Council (DSC), the CBD Youth Athletics Competition’s vision is to create, foster and develop an interschool Athletic competition for the youth of the nation while also bringing together the local communities. As sponsors, CBD distributes a total amount of Dhs 500,000 to schools topping the various competitions in different age categories.
In the grand finals held in the first half of March, Abdul Aziz Al Makhdoum from Dubai National School, Al Barsha was awarded the ‘Best Emirati Athlete’ award, while Maryam Mohammed Al Balooshi from the Nad Al Hamar School bagged the award in the girls section.
Our Own High School’s Sumesh Ramdas walked away with the award for ‘Best Coach for Boys’ and Indu Singh of GEMS Our Own English High School was chosen as the ‘Best Coach for Girls’.