Photo essay: Ultimate Frisbee competition grips Dubai


Faisal Salah
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Frisbee fans congregated at Black Palace Beach in Dubai to take part in Seas the Disc, an Ultimate Frisbee competition.

The one-day competition involved teams of seven competing against one another and had more than 100 participants.

Ultimate Frisbee is described as an exciting, non-contact, self-refereed team sport. It's a fast-paced game that can be played on grass, indoors or on the beach.

The Seas the Disc (a pun on "Seize the Day") tournament was being held for a second time, after the success of last year’s competition which took place at Dubai’s Kite beach.

The sport of Ultimate, as it is commonly known, has grown in popularity in the past few years. The emirate hosted the World Championships of Beach Ultimate in 2015, a five-day event that had participants from around the world.

Tiki Taka Ultimate Dubai say they will continue to organise competitions to keep up with the sport's growing fanbase.

Leonila “Fonz” Rojas is one of the organisers of the event. She tells The National that the sport has long found success with competitions held in the emirate.

"Ultimate has been around Dubai for a long time now and has hosted numerous local and international tournaments. In 2018, the Mena Ultimate Club Championships was held in Dubai. This year, the Mena Club Championships – the biggest Ultimate event in the Mena region is coming back to Dubai and will be organised by our club," she says.

As for the future of Seas the Disc, she has high hopes for the event to grow into something more. "The plan is to make this an annual event and even bigger."

The event this year was held on April 29 and organised by Tiki Taka Ultimate Dubai.

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hall of shame

SUNDERLAND 2002-03

No one has ended a Premier League season quite like Sunderland. They lost each of their final 15 games, taking no points after January. They ended up with 19 in total, sacking managers Peter Reid and Howard Wilkinson and losing 3-1 to Charlton when they scored three own goals in eight minutes.

SUNDERLAND 2005-06

Until Derby came along, Sunderland’s total of 15 points was the Premier League’s record low. They made it until May and their final home game before winning at the Stadium of Light while they lost a joint record 29 of their 38 league games.

HUDDERSFIELD 2018-19

Joined Derby as the only team to be relegated in March. No striker scored until January, while only two players got more assists than goalkeeper Jonas Lossl. The mid-season appointment Jan Siewert was to end his time as Huddersfield manager with a 5.3 per cent win rate.

ASTON VILLA 2015-16

Perhaps the most inexplicably bad season, considering they signed Idrissa Gueye and Adama Traore and still only got 17 points. Villa won their first league game, but none of the next 19. They ended an abominable campaign by taking one point from the last 39 available.

FULHAM 2018-19

Terrible in different ways. Fulham’s total of 26 points is not among the lowest ever but they contrived to get relegated after spending over £100 million (Dh457m) in the transfer market. Much of it went on defenders but they only kept two clean sheets in their first 33 games.

LA LIGA: Sporting Gijon, 13 points in 1997-98.

BUNDESLIGA: Tasmania Berlin, 10 points in 1965-66

Abramovich London

A Kensington Palace Gardens house with 15 bedrooms is valued at more than £150 million.

A three-storey penthouse at Chelsea Waterfront bought for £22 million.

Steel company Evraz drops more than 10 per cent in trading after UK officials said it was potentially supplying the Russian military.

Sale of Chelsea Football Club is now impossible.

HOW TO WATCH

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What is graphene?

Graphene is a single layer of carbon atoms arranged like honeycomb.

It was discovered in 2004, when Russian-born Manchester scientists Andrei Geim and Kostya Novoselov were "playing about" with sticky tape and graphite - the material used as "lead" in pencils.

Placing the tape on the graphite and peeling it, they managed to rip off thin flakes of carbon. In the beginning they got flakes consisting of many layers of graphene. But as they repeated the process many times, the flakes got thinner.

By separating the graphite fragments repeatedly, they managed to create flakes that were just one atom thick. Their experiment had led to graphene being isolated for the very first time.

At the time, many believed it was impossible for such thin crystalline materials to be stable. But examined under a microscope, the material remained stable, and when tested was found to have incredible properties.

It is many times times stronger than steel, yet incredibly lightweight and flexible. It is electrically and thermally conductive but also transparent. The world's first 2D material, it is one million times thinner than the diameter of a single human hair.

But the 'sticky tape' method would not work on an industrial scale. Since then, scientists have been working on manufacturing graphene, to make use of its incredible properties.

In 2010, Geim and Novoselov were awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics. Their discovery meant physicists could study a new class of two-dimensional materials with unique properties. 

 

Updated: June 17, 2023, 4:17 AM