Dubai: For Ahmad Mubarak Al Mutaiwei, 1997 was a traumatic year. The young Emirati was involved in a road accident while driving to work and suffered serious injuries to his leg.
He was taken abroad for treatment but a year later doctors were left with no option but to amputate a leg. Then followed a series of painful surgeries to allow for a prosthetic limb that gave Al Mutaiwei the hope of leading a normal life once again.
“It’s a period of time that I would just like to forget,” Al Mutaiwei told Gulf News. “My mind was focused on wanting to do something special, something different. I wanted to empower people by giving back something to society,” he says.
A Human Resources Manager at Dubai Holding, Al Mutaiwei started the long arduous journey of training on a hand cycle. “Finally, I decided that I would use this race at NAS to make my debut. I was nervous at first but once I got going, I knew I would achieve my objective of finishing this race,” he said.
Al Mutaiwei finished in ninth place, but he could have very well finished way up in the standings, had he not stopped to assist a fellow cyclist who had broken his pedal. “He told me he wanted to stop the race. I said in my mind ‘no way’. And so I did the next best thing, and that was to cycle along with him,” Al Mutaiwei recalled.
“And now that I have tasted what it is to compete against a handicap, I have started dreaming about representing the UAE at the 2020 Tokyo Paralympic Games,” he added.
Osama Al Shaffar, President, UAE Cycling Federation (UAE CF), who presented Al Mutaiwei with a special medal, fully backed the UAE cyclist’s future plans. “The first thing we will do is to include Ahmad into the UAE Cycling Federation as he has so much to offer to our sport. After that we will help him realise his dreams of competing at the Olympic Games,” Al Shaffar said.
