Sandboarding In The Desert

Dame Kelly Holmes sandboarding in the Liwa Desert, Rub Al Khali (Empty Quarter), Abu Dhabi, UAE.  Photo credit: Jamie McDonald/Getty Images for Laureus.

Sandboarding is hot in the Liwa Desert, Rub Al Khali (Empty Quarter) two hours from Abu Dhabi.

Recently, Olympian Dame Kelly Holmes; skateboarding legend Tony Hawk; Australian surfer Layne Beachley and in-line skater Taig Khris of France tried sandboarding  in the Rub’ Al Khali (Empty Quarter).

Dame Kelly Holmes. Photo credit: Jamie McDonald/Getty Images for Laureus.

They were in Abu Dhabi for The Laureus World Sports Awards and sandboarding guests of Abu Dhabi Tourism Authority (ADTA).

“I’d never done anything like this before. I certainly wasn’t a sandboarding natural to start off with but I got there. It is pretty amazing that one moment you are in a modern city and then only a short distance away you can be in this vast rolling desert,” says Dame Kelly Holmes.

The athletes tackled Liwa’s 300-metre high dunes, some of the world’s largest sand dunes.

“I never thought of sand as a surface you could ride on, so I was really surprised that we got so fast,” says Tony Hawk. “It was daunting standing on top of these huge dunes pondering going straight down, which I didn’t expect.”