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From 42km races to digital wars: How UAE cybersecurity chief uses sport to build resilience
Dr Mohamed Al Kuwaiti says the lessons he learned through sport also apply to cybersecurity, where leadership requires hands-on experience and decisive action under pressure
- PUBLISHED: Sat 22 Aug 2026, 4:32 PM
By day, Dr Mohamed Al Kuwaiti is responsible for helping protect the UAE from cyberattacks. By night, sometimes as late as 1am, he could be out running the streets of Abu Dhabi, one of the ways the country's cybersecurity chief keeps himself going through a job he says operates 24 hours a day.
There is, however, nothing particularly relaxing about the way Al Kuwaiti chooses to unwind.
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The UAE Government’s Head of Cybersecurity has run 42km marathons, completed 80km horse endurance races and is now working towards longer rides. His marathon personal best is 3 hours and 58 minutes. And when he is not running or riding, there is a good chance he is trying to get other people moving too.
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For someone whose professional life revolves around preparing for the worst possible cyber crisis, endurance sport has become his own form of preparation.
During his first marathon in 2023, the Adnoc Abu Dhabi Marathon, Al Kuwaiti had trained for a maximum of 17 km before entering. By the time he reached about 27km, his body had had enough. He stopped and walked while other runners passed him, some calling out: "Doctor, come on, Doctor."
But quitting was not an option.
"I had the insistence that even if I walk, even if I crawl, I have to finish the line," he recalled. He eventually crossed the finish line after about five and a half hours. The result was hardly fast, but the experience became one of his most useful sporting lessons: preparation matters.
He has since cut almost an hour and a half from that first marathon time, recording a personal best of 3 hours and 58 minutes. He has run in Dubai, Paris and Washington, DC, including the demanding Marine Corps Marathon, and is now looking ahead to races in Sydney and Chicago.
Running, he says, is tougher than horse endurance. Having progressed from 40km to 80km endurance rides, he has an eventual goal of reaching 160km. His explanation is simple; on a horse, the work is shared.
"In the marathon, of course it's hard because you're the one who's doing all the work," he said.
In an 80km endurance ride, meanwhile, horse and rider share the effort. The distance is still gruelling; his recent 80km ride took around eight hours, broken into stages of roughly 20-25km, with rest periods in between, but he is not doing all of it alone.
His relationship with horses goes back much further than his running.
He has been around them since childhood, from about the age of 10, and sees riding as more than a sport. Patience, endurance and discipline are among the qualities he says people learn from horses, alongside a connection to UAE traditions and heritage.
Running came much later.
While studying and working in the United States, where he spent around 14 years, his sporting life was initially dominated by football and gym training. He eventually began running in Washington, DC, but only over 5 km or 10 km distances.
It was after returning to the UAE and following an ACL injury and rehabilitation that he gradually moved into longer distances.
His schedule now bears little resemblance to that of a conventional amateur athlete.
There is no fixed training timetable because his cybersecurity job can change from one moment to the next. If he gets a gap, he runs. Sometimes that means going out late at night. He has run around Umm Al Emarat Park, the Corniche and Abu Dhabi Equestrian Club, while horse training takes place at Baniyas.
But the sport is not simply his private escape from work. He has repeatedly turned it into a team activity.
That was particularly visible at Abu Dhabi's Cyber Run & Ride, a community event organised by the Abu Dhabi Sports Council under the sponsorship of the UAE Cybersecurity Council.
The January 2026 event combined running, cycling and cybersecurity awareness, with races along the Corniche ranging from 2.5km to a half-marathon. The three-day event drew nearly 13,000 participants across its activities, according to the event agency's post-event figures.
For Al Kuwaiti, the point was never simply to get cybersecurity professionals into running shoes.
He wanted children, families and the wider community to associate digital safety with everyday life and healthy habits.
"The Cyber Run was a must for everyone [on my team]," he said.
He sees physical and digital well-being as connected, particularly for young people spending increasing amounts of time on phones, tablets and online games.
And he does not believe leadership is something that should only be practised from behind a desk.
That lesson goes back to another part of his life that few people would associate with the UAE's top cybersecurity official: football refereeing.
He remembers one match between Al Ain and Bani Yas when he was 18. A confrontation broke out between players from the two sides and Al Kuwaiti, then a young referee, intervened.
He decided to caution the player he believed had started the dispute. The decision did not go down particularly well. Suddenly, he found himself facing five or six players.
It was, by his own account, one of those moments when the authority of the person making the decision is tested by the people expected to accept it. He admits he was afraid, but he did not back down.
Eventually, the situation was brought under control. For Al Kuwaiti, the lesson has stayed with him: a leader has to be firm, neutral and willing to make the difficult call when the situation demands it.
That same principle, he says, applies to cybersecurity. Whether it is a football match, a marathon, a horse endurance race or a cyber crisis, he believes leadership cannot be learned solely by watching from the sidelines.
"When you're in the back-end, you're only coaching, and you only see what's going on, and you tell them to do this and that; it's different than when you're hands-on," he said.
Endurance sport has also given him a way of measuring qualities that are harder to quantify in an office: patience, commitment and determination.
A marathon can last four or five hours. An 80km horse ride can take eight or nine. A cyber crisis, meanwhile, can arrive at any hour.
But he sees a common thread. "You feel how determined, how committed, how patient you are, and you use it in your work," he said. There is one important difference, though.
In sport, the consequences ultimately fall on the individual. In cybersecurity, they can fall on an entire country. "If you are involved in a leakage or any other major incident, the responsibility here is greater," he said.
That may explain why, after spending the day dealing with threats that can never be completely switched off, Al Kuwaiti chooses an activity that is almost the opposite of sitting behind a screen.
The cyber chief runs until his legs hurt, rides until the hours pass and keeps chasing a faster finish.
His next target is certainly not retirement from endurance. It is another race: the Sydney and Chicago World Marathon Majors, as well as an 80km endurance race in France later this year.
