The Incident

This was a real interesting story as we watched it unfold from a distance and then was able to piece it together from a range of sources. Carla one of the Aussies (Miss Melbourne Cup Doha 2008) was invited by a bloke to watch the tennis from one of the corporate boxes. The rest of us ( the 50 odd Aussies and Americans) were all sitting in the nose bleeders (the seats up really high) on the opposite side of the court so watched as the events unfolded. So Carla walks in with her date and as you would expect she has dressed to impress her date. She was wearing her high heels and missed a step heading down to the box. She survived the fall by grabbing the rail. Now she was with her date and a couple of other blokes from his company and so they were given directions to their box. The box had six seats but there were two young women in Abayas sitting in the box. So the three guys grab the front three seats and Carla walks in front of the two women and sits next to them. Now Carla has dressed to impress so is in a sleeveless white top with spaghetti strings. She assesses the situation that as she is now sitting next to a couple of Qatari woman she should cover up, so does so. After the first game there is a flurry from the ushers and security and they are asking the guys and Carla to move boxes. We can see one of the guys arguing with the usher and showing him their tickets which indicated that they are in the right place. But they move to another box. Problem? The problem was that one of the girls was in fact the Emir’s daughter and here were three western men sharing the box with her. A western woman had stood over her (and was wearing clothing you would not normally wear when meeting royalty) to get past. Mary my boss was sitting just behind and said the ushers and security guys were frantic when they initially realised what had happened with letting the men into the box. I think it meant that somebody was going to be for it for letting such a thing happen.