The Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge falls dead-center in the “work with what you got” line of thought.

And what does Abu Dhabi have a lot of?

Sand.

Miles and miles and miles of it. Mountains of it. In deserts that are not just waste areas, but actual dunes, moving and shifting and drifting almost like a landscape come to life. It is the sort of thing you associate with a French Foreign Legion film … except that North Africa doesn’t really have sand on the grand scale we do in the UAE.

So, what to do? Make a sand-wich? Or, in the sports world, launch an endurance race over your bounty of sand.

The Desert Challenge has been staged every year since 1991, which makes it an almost pre-historical event, in this country. (Which was created in 1971.)

Early in its history, race organizers made a point of having the drivers/riders spend time in all seven Emirates, but in 2009 it became an all-Abu Dhabi event.

Makes sense. Abu Dhabi leads the UAE in sand. In part because it is the biggest of the seven Emiratis, but also because it contains a fair chunk of the famous Empty Quarter, a region the size of France made up almost entirely of sand dunes. If you followed the link, just now, you will see that geographers call the Empty Quarter the world’s largest sand desert.

So, the Abu Dhabi Desert Challenge turns loose about 100 dune buggies and about 50 motorcycles, and off they go, trying to get from Point A to Point B for four or five days in a shifting landscape of nothingness.

(It makes for great photos. Every sports editor knows that. Drag racing, water polo, football, soccer … great visuals. Count on it. Baseball, swimming, circuit-racing, cricket, marathons … not so much. Follow this link, and click on the video icon beneath the second photo.)

We are doing a story in tomorrow’s newspaper in which an Emirati old-timer, the only man to race in every staging of the Desert Challenge, recalls being stranded in the desert and having no idea where he was … and navigating by the stars to nurse his stricken motorcycle to water and a road. (His son laughs at the concept; says he would use the GPS he carries with him.)

It’s empty out there in the Empty Quarter. And really, really sandy. Can’t walk over it. Can’t build on it. But you can race it, for sure.