A Year at Full Throttle: How Active Oman Became the Heartbeat of a Nation in Motion

When the Oman Automobile Association unveiled its bold new identity in April 2025, few anticipated the scale of what would follow. One year on, Active Oman has become the entry point to something far larger — a national sports culture being built from the ground up.

There is a particular kind of ambition that announces itself quietly. No grand declarations, no sweeping promises — just a door opening in Airport Heights, Muscat, and an invitation to step through it. That is how Active Oman began, in the spring of 2025, when HH Sayyid Theyazin bin Haitham Al Said, Minister of Culture, Sports and Youth, inaugurated two new facilities at the Oman Automobile Association and, in the same gesture, gave the institution an entirely new name and identity. It was a transformation hidden inside what looked, on the surface, like a ribbon-cutting.

Twelve months later, that quiet ambition has produced something remarkable.

More Than a Rebrand

The renaming of the Oman Automobile Association as Active Oman was not cosmetic. It signalled a deliberate rethinking of what the organisation was for — and who it was for. Where the OAA had long been associated with motorsport and driving documents, Active Oman positioned itself as a destination for every young Omani who had a hobby to pursue, a talent to develop, or simply an afternoon to fill with something worthwhile.

The facilities that opened under the Active Oman banner reflected that ambition in full. The Active Oman Centre brought together padel courts, an acrobatics hall, snooker and billiards areas, a digital golf zone, a bowling hall, and an international karting circuit — all within a single destination at Airport Heights. Alongside it, Action Point Oman introduced something the Sultanate had never seen before: six indoor shooting ranges built to international standards, opening competitive shooting to the general public for the first time.

The Brigadier Jamal bin Saeed Al Taie, Chairman of the Oman Automobile Association Board, described it at the opening as a pioneering platform adding a new dimension to sporting and social life in Oman. A year in, that description looks, if anything, conservative.

A Gateway, Not a Destination

What the past twelve months have revealed is that Active Oman was never meant to be the endpoint. It was designed as the entry point — the place where a five-year-old climbs into a Baby Kart for the first time, where a family discovers padel on a Friday evening, where a young man finds that the precision and focus required at a shooting range suits something in his temperament he had not previously named. From there, the ecosystem extends outward.

In May 2025, just weeks after Active Oman’s inauguration, a second shooting facility opened in Bausher — one of an entirely different magnitude. The National Olympic Shooting Complex, inaugurated by HH Sayyid Shihab bin Tarik Al Said, Deputy Prime Minister for Defence Affairs, was built to the full specifications of the International Shooting Sport Federation. It features a 10-metre range with 80 targets, a 25-metre range with 50 targets, a 50-metre range with 80 targets, and a 1,600 square metre finals hall with spectator stands. Where Action Point Oman offers discovery and community, the National Olympic Shooting Complex offers the infrastructure for elite competition. Together, they form a complete pathway — from first trigger pull to international podium.

The pattern repeats across disciplines. The OAA’s motorsport calendar for 2025–2026 has grown into one of the most ambitious in the region, stretching well beyond Muscat. Rally stages are running out of Sohar in Al Batinah, the Sultanate’s first-ever International BAJA is launching from the Sharqiya dunes, and the Oman International Drift Championship is now in its sixth and largest season yet. For the first time, organised motorsport has established tracks and events in Sohar, Ibri, Dhahira, and Al Jabal Al Akhdar — drawing more than 200 competitors and 20,000 spectators into the fold of a sport that was once concentrated in the capital alone.

The Younger Generation in the Driver’s Seat

Perhaps the most consequential thing Active Oman has done in its first year is lower the age of entry. The Baby Kart programme, designed for children as young as five, removes the idea that motorsport belongs to a particular age, background, or skill level. A child who completes a lap at Airport Heights today is a potential Rotax Max competitor — and a potential Omani racing driver — in ten years. The programme is not just sport. It is pipeline-building dressed as fun.

The same logic applies across the centre. Acrobatics halls, padel courts, and digital golf simulators serve a generation that wants variety, immediacy, and access. Active Oman provides all three under one roof, with an environment designed to feel exciting rather than intimidating.

What Oman Is Building

Step back far enough and the picture that emerges over this past year is not a collection of unrelated facilities. It is a deliberate architecture — a national sports culture being constructed with the same methodical care that Oman has historically brought to its physical infrastructure.

The National Olympic Shooting Complex ensures that when Omani shooters are ready to compete internationally, the training ground is there. The BAJA in the Sharqiya dunes ensures that rally driving has a home in terrain that is, by any global standard, extraordinary. The Active Oman Centre ensures that none of this begins in the elite — that every tier of participation is addressed, from the child taking a first tentative go-kart lap to the club member refining their aim in an internationally-certified range.

A year ago, Active Oman opened a door. What has emerged on the other side is a country in motion — and only picking up speed.