FAST AND FURIOUS: Amro started street racing at a very young age, and has to his credit several wins. Right: DISTINCTION: Amro was the first Qatari to mount the podium in the 24 hours race of Dubai, standing 2nd in SP2 Class.

By Umer Nangiana


His mind is constantly juggling with ideas and he wants to act upon most of them, most of the time, and quickly too. “And this is why you speak so fast,” a psychologist once told him. And it is not just speaking, speed in general thrills him.
This is where he gets the stimulus from to take on some of the most exciting yet daring sports in the world. To satisfy the whim in his head, Amro al-Hamad, a 33-year-old Qatari national, would go to any depth, almost literally!
The young speed car enthusiast recently set a national record in free diving; his second love, or may be first, after motor sport. Amro went -80 meters deep in the No Limit and -70 meters in Variable Weight categories.
No-one in the GCC has ever gone that deep in the No Limit. A Kuwaiti national, however, bettered Amro’s record by just 3 meters, 10 days after his attempt. However, he plans to beat that next year.
Amro holds the record for going the deepest into the sea in the region -80 meters. He is a FII (Freediving Instructors International) certified coach in Qatar, a winner of multiple car championships and by profession he is an Equipment Engineer at Shell Qatar.
“People here mostly just do spearfishing. My aim was not only to set the national records but to open the door here for others to start thinking beyond the idea that freediving is only for spearfishing! You can do other things with this beautiful sport,” Amro tells Community in a chat about his record-setting freediving attempts and passion for motor sport.
And Amro has not depended on external funding to achieve all that he has.
“I did all of this from my own pocket. I did not get any funding from anybody. Every single day of diving and safety divers’ training was costing me a fortune. It was costing me around 150 to 200 euros every day,” reveals the freediving buff, adding that the amount was big but he did it for a cause.
“I wanted to come back and do something for Qatar, have first ever numbers registered and that too reputable numbers. I could have gone and done a -30 meter and set a national record, but I actually went on to do -80 meters, which was also a first in GCC,” says the young record holder.
He first discovered his passion for freediving in 2008 when he went spearfishing with no prior training. In 2010, he took his Level 1 FII course with Coach Khalid al-Hamadi, Qatar’s 1st free-diving coach and Qatar Sub’s general manager.
Qatar Sub is FII’s sole facility in the Middle East imparting safe free-diving education. In 2011, Amro sat for his Level 2 course in Dahab, Egypt with Martin Stepanek, FII’s owner and general manager, a 13-time world record free-diver. Amro was then encouraged to become an assistant instructor, to work with Khalid.
“I passed my assistant instructor course and became one in 2012 and later that year I assisted Martin in Dahab, Egypt in a Level 2 course but this time as an assistant, not a student. This is when I made my first deep dive ever. It was -42 meters and I got hooked to competitive deep diving,” recalls Amro.
In December 2012, he passed the instructor examination and next year went back to Egypt to train and break his -42 meters deep personal best. He managed a -53 meters and unofficially was the deepest man in Qatar.
Two years later, he decided to train again from February and go deeper this time. “Along with providing free-diving course to students here in Qatar I worked on myself and had a decision in mind that I should push the limits,” says Amro.
“We had a free-diving camp in Tenerife in the Canary islands, Spain where we had access to depth. We don’t have access to good conditions, depth and visibility here in Qatar. I came back feeling more determined in my ability to go deeper,” the sportsman explains.
Next, he arranged with Free-dive Greece — located in the city of Kalamata in Greece — and set a custom training programme with Stavros from the 18th of September to get acclimatised to depth and set Qatar’s 1st official National record, certified by AIDA (International Association for Development of Apnea).
“Literally, any depth I could have done could have been set as a national record. Setting the record was not the aim though. I didn’t want to be a king in a scrap yard. We pushed hard but within safe limits every day,” asserts Amro.
His initial plan was to achieve -60 meters in the Variable Weight category and -70 meters in the No Limit category. The conditions and safety procedures in Greece and his fast acclimatisation with depth and getting used to equalising at depth pushed him further into setting new camp goals.
He went for -70 Variable Weight and -80 meters in the No Limit and hit the bull’s eye. “When I came up I was absolutely clean, followed all the protocols by taking my mask off and signalling to the judge that I was okay with a gesture of my hand. Then, he asked me some questions to which  I replied and they testified my attempt as the national record,” Amro recalls.
The records are official National records for the State of Qatar achieved under the supervision of AIDA, the international body for certifying world and national records, with the attendance of at least 2 AIDA official judges.
Amro is also a winner of Middle East radical championship 2013-2014 and he was the first Qatari to mount the podium in the 24 hours race of Dubai “2nd in SP2 Class.”
Recently, he and his team MARC Cars Australia won the SP2 class in Zandvoort 12 hours endurance race.
“I got the inspiration for racing from my elder brothers who were into fast cars at the time I was growing up. I started street racing at a very young age. In fact, I did it in the first instance that I got my hands on a car,” Amro tells us.
“They say, you walk before you can run. I wanted to go out running. I actually took a car from the dealership and went out to race (with) people. This is how mad I was about it,” he recalls.
Amro says he started with illegal street racing before going on to participate in the QMMF (Qatar Motor and Motorcycle Federation) speed tests or sprints.
“I joined, thinking a lot of people are not going to be faster than me and I finished last. No, actually sorry second last because the guy who was last broke his engine,” he smiles.
“And I was really angry, then. I went back home and I was thinking what went wrong. It is not just about how fast you can go, it is about how fast you can stop and how good can you take a turn. I did my research, a lot of reading,” he goes on to add.
Since then, he started learning bit by bit, modified his car, acquired new cars and went on to win races and championships.