RAS AL KHAIMAH // When Blake Skjellerup skates on to the ice at the Winter Olympic Games tomorrow, he will be carrying the hopes of more than four million New Zealanders. But to the people of Ras al Khaimah, he is also representing them.
It may seem unusual for someone who races on ice to call the desert home.
The 24-year-old short-track speed skater came to the emirate as a teenager to visit his mother and stepfather, who taught at RAK Women's College.
He fell in love with the desert and its community, and would pack up his skates at the end of each season in New Zealand and return to the sunshine and friendships he found in RAK.
After almost five years in the UAE, his family returned to New Zealand two months ago. But in RAK, Skjellerup remains a local hero.
He has trained in the dunes of Liwa and traversed the craggy cliffs of the Hajar mountains. Skjellerup says his regime of running and swimming in the desert sun is a respite from the rigours of his workouts on ice.
During the rest of the year, he has a stricter schedule. He skates six hours a day, "six and a half days a week" at the Calgary Olympic Oval, built for the 1988 Games, the last time they were hosted by Canada. Skjellerup trains three hours each, morning and night four hours on the ice and two hours off.
Such dedication earned him the title of Junior Maori Sportsman of the Year in 2004 and New Zealand Speed Skater of the Year in 2003, 2004 and 2007. He boasts the New Zealand records at 500m, 1,000m and 1,500m, events in which he is competing in Vancouver.
Yet it all began by accident. When Skjellerup was 10, he wanted to be an All Black.
"I broke my arm and I couldn't play rugby anymore and had to do a sport in winter," he said.
"My brother was a skater and he said, 'You don't really need your arms for that'. So I tried it and I liked it. It stuck.
"It was so different and not many other people did it. That was one of the reasons why I liked it.
"It really hit me when I was about 12 and I first saw the Winter Olympics. I had no idea that it was an Olympic sport before and I was like, 'Wow, I want to go there'. That was the dream all along."
Skjellerup first represented New Zealand when he was 13, at the Tasman Cup in Australia. But it was not until he travelled to Korea for the Junior World Championships at 16 that he got his first real taste of international competition.
"It was a big shock. I'd only been competing against Australians and it was just a completely different world," he said.
"It got me excited about the level of skating I could reach. I didn't have much of an idea beforehand."
Speed skating is a relatively young sport in New Zealand and better access to ice time and coaching resources drew Skjellerup overseas. He has competed in countries as far-flung as China, Hungary and South Africa, and trained in South Korea and now Canada.
"Every year since I was 16 I trained somewhere over the New Zealand summer," he said.
In South Korea in 2007, Skjellerup was 22 and the self-proclaimed "old guy".
"They trained me extremely hard and you don't want to quit because there's a lot of younger kids behind you," he said.
"Everybody's my competition. When I'm racing I don't really see a country, I don't see a person, I just see an object I have to get around, and fast.
"It's exhilarating. In long track, it's you against the clock. In short track, it's you against other people - anything can happen."
Skjellerup moved to Calgary 18 months ago to join four other skaters from small countries who faced similar problems with limited ice time and resources. They are trained by Jeroen Otter, a Dutch coach working for Belgium.
The move to Calgary has worked wonders. "My performance has improved tenfold. My times have gone down a huge amount. I've been in five top 16 finishes. Before that I was struggling to be in the top 25."
Skjellerup finished 15th in the 1,000m and 25th in the 500m at the International Skating Union World Cup in November, giving New Zealand an Olympic spot.
Skaters do not qualify as individuals so he had to wait until January 27 for confirmation that he had been chosen to represent New Zealand. He is racing in the 500m, 1,000m and 1,500m events. They begin tomorrow with the 1,500m, 5am on Sunday UAE time.
About a quarter of Skjellerup's training budget is funded by the New Zealand Sports Academy. For the rest, he has relied on fund-raising events, family and friends.
Whatever his performance at the Olympics, Skjellerup is already a champion in RAK, respected for his good company and humour.
At its karaoke joint, he belts out Supertramp songs with an energy that could only belong to a world-class athlete. His fans across the globe have posted a video on YouTube to show their support.
At the Olympic Village in Vancouver, where he is living with 15 other New Zealand athletes for the next two weeks, he said: "I can't even imagine what it's going to be like in front of 15,000 people. It's amazing here right now.
"I'm looking out the window, and the building beside us is covered in the Stars and Stripes and the building next to them is Sweden and also beside us is Italy.
"We have New Zealand ferns all over our balcony."
The future was open, Skjellerup said. "It's the Olympics and then I'll go from there."
But, he added, he was looking forward to a chicken shawarma from al Farrouj when he returned to RAK.
azacharias@thenational.ae
The rules on fostering in the UAE
A foster couple or family must:
- be Muslim, Emirati and be residing in the UAE
- not be younger than 25 years old
- not have been convicted of offences or crimes involving moral turpitude
- be free of infectious diseases or psychological and mental disorders
- have the ability to support its members and the foster child financially
- undertake to treat and raise the child in a proper manner and take care of his or her health and well-being
- A single, divorced or widowed Muslim Emirati female, residing in the UAE may apply to foster a child if she is at least 30 years old and able to support the child financially
A MINECRAFT MOVIE
Director: Jared Hess
Starring: Jack Black, Jennifer Coolidge, Jason Momoa
Rating: 3/5
CREW
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Company profile
Company: Verity
Date started: May 2021
Founders: Kamal Al-Samarrai, Dina Shoman and Omar Al Sharif
Based: Dubai
Sector: FinTech
Size: four team members
Stage: Intially bootstrapped but recently closed its first pre-seed round of $800,000
Investors: Wamda, VentureSouq, Beyond Capital and regional angel investors
What can you do?
Document everything immediately; including dates, times, locations and witnesses
Seek professional advice from a legal expert
You can report an incident to HR or an immediate supervisor
You can use the Ministry of Human Resources and Emiratisation’s dedicated hotline
In criminal cases, you can contact the police for additional support
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Sir Tim Berners-Lee was born in London in a household of mathematicians and computer scientists. Both his mother, Mary Lee, and father, Conway, were early computer scientists who worked on the Ferranti 1 - the world's first commercially-available, general purpose digital computer. Sir Tim studied Physics at the University of Oxford and held a series of roles developing code and building software before moving to Switzerland to work for Cern, the European Particle Physics laboratory. He developed the worldwide web code as a side project in 1989 as a global information-sharing system. After releasing the first web code in 1991, Cern made it open and free for all to use. Sir Tim now campaigns for initiatives to make sure the web remains open and accessible to all.
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Favourite film: The Greatest Showman.
Favourite holiday destination: I love visiting Melbourne as I have family there and it’s a wonderful place. New York at Christmas is also magical.
Favourite food: I went to boarding school so I like any cuisine really.
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Mercer, the investment consulting arm of US services company Marsh & McLennan, expects its wealth division to at least double its assets under management (AUM) in the Middle East as wealth in the region continues to grow despite economic headwinds, a company official said.
Mercer Wealth, which globally has $160 billion in AUM, plans to boost its AUM in the region to $2-$3bn in the next 2-3 years from the present $1bn, said Yasir AbuShaban, a Dubai-based principal with Mercer Wealth.
“Within the next two to three years, we are looking at reaching $2 to $3 billion as a conservative estimate and we do see an opportunity to do so,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Mercer does not directly make investments, but allocates clients’ money they have discretion to, to professional asset managers. They also provide advice to clients.
“We have buying power. We can negotiate on their (client’s) behalf with asset managers to provide them lower fees than they otherwise would have to get on their own,” he added.
Mercer Wealth’s clients include sovereign wealth funds, family offices, and insurance companies among others.
From its office in Dubai, Mercer also looks after Africa, India and Turkey, where they also see opportunity for growth.
Wealth creation in Middle East and Africa (MEA) grew 8.5 per cent to $8.1 trillion last year from $7.5tn in 2015, higher than last year’s global average of 6 per cent and the second-highest growth in a region after Asia-Pacific which grew 9.9 per cent, according to consultancy Boston Consulting Group (BCG). In the region, where wealth grew just 1.9 per cent in 2015 compared with 2014, a pickup in oil prices has helped in wealth generation.
BCG is forecasting MEA wealth will rise to $12tn by 2021, growing at an annual average of 8 per cent.
Drivers of wealth generation in the region will be split evenly between new wealth creation and growth of performance of existing assets, according to BCG.
Another general trend in the region is clients’ looking for a comprehensive approach to investing, according to Mr AbuShaban.
“Institutional investors or some of the families are seeing a slowdown in the available capital they have to invest and in that sense they are looking at optimizing the way they manage their portfolios and making sure they are not investing haphazardly and different parts of their investment are working together,” said Mr AbuShaban.
Some clients also have a higher appetite for risk, given the low interest-rate environment that does not provide enough yield for some institutional investors. These clients are keen to invest in illiquid assets, such as private equity and infrastructure.
“What we have seen is a desire for higher returns in what has been a low-return environment specifically in various fixed income or bonds,” he said.
“In this environment, we have seen a de facto increase in the risk that clients are taking in things like illiquid investments, private equity investments, infrastructure and private debt, those kind of investments were higher illiquidity results in incrementally higher returns.”
The Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, one of the largest sovereign wealth funds, said in its 2016 report that has gradually increased its exposure in direct private equity and private credit transactions, mainly in Asian markets and especially in China and India. The authority’s private equity department focused on structured equities owing to “their defensive characteristics.”
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Election pledges on migration
CDU: "Now is the time to control the German borders and enforce strict border rejections"
SPD: "Border closures and blanket rejections at internal borders contradict the spirit of a common area of freedom"
