Kuwait Times

Published Date: February 27, 2007
By Nancy Oteifa

KUWAIT: "It is believed that sports are very restricted or limited to a certain age, but not for me. I am 52 and I walk for hours everyday and never feel tired", said the sports enthusiast, Ali Al-Edan who climbed the 150-storey Liberation Tower in a record time of just nine minutes yesterday as an appreciation and love to the Kuwaiti society on Liberation Day. "I am very happy on this achievement and I dedicate it to His Highness the Amir Sheikh Sabah Al-Ahmed Al-Jaber Al-Sabah on this special occasion of the Liberation day. For me this is a memorable day in realising this challenge in a record time, which also coincides on the occasions of the National and Liberation Days of my beloved country and I advise all my fellowmen to go for such challenging experiences," he exclaimed.

He said, "The normal time usually required to climb the 150 floors of the tower is 20 minutes, but I was able to achieve it in only nine minutes. I didn't suffer at all because I am always fit and I had trained a lot for this event and I knew exactly what I had to do. I used a new technique of jumping the flight of stairs; this makes it much easier, faster and not exhaustive." Anjum Al-Edan, his eighteen-year-old daughter said, "I am very proud and fully support what he does and I wish all athletes and sports persons would do the same."

The Kuwait Liberation Tower is one of the structures annexed to the Liberation Telecommunication Tower Complex. The Tower is the highest structure in the Middle East and the fifth highest freestanding Telecommunication Tower in the world. It's 372 metres high from ground level, is 72 metres higher than the Eiffel Tower in Paris and nine metres lower than the Empire State Building in New York.  

The 150-storey tower, which belongs to the Ministry of Communications, took 67 months to construct at a cost of KD50000000. Alaa, his other daughter and his favourite was also happy on her father's achievement, while her other elder sister Tarabya believes that her father's feat will make a vast difference in the transformation of Kuwaiti society. Al-Edan's future plan is to climb the CNN tower in Toronto, Canada and being the ambitious man that he is we can rest, assured that he will fulfil all his ambitions in life.