An Oasis

Jim Caple wrote a highly fascinating article for ESPN about the emerging sports paradise located in.....Dubai.

Yes, that Dubai. A sample:

After all, the mercury might routinely climb halfway to the boiling point in summer, but Ski Dubai, a snow park inside the vast Mall of the Emirates, is open year round. It has ice sculptures, snowmen and a short bobsled run. There is even the St. Moritz restaurant modeled after a Swiss ski lodge, complete with a flame roaring in a stone fireplace where men in snow-white robes and women in black abayas sit close by, dipping forks into a fondue pot. For an equally ludicrous contradiction to a ski slope in the Arabian desert, Minnesota's Mall of America would have to have a midwinter sand dune park with camels and oil wells.

Read the whole thing....