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Ahmed Zaher started competing in triathlons 12 years ago. At the time, he was a mechanical engineer, and he owned a gas station with a Mercedes repair shop. He became so successful at triathlons, eventually competing in eight Ironman World Championships, that he became a triathlon coach. Now Zaher, who is from Egypt, is certified by USA Triathlon and USA Cycling to train athletes at any level. About 10 years ago, he started Play Tri, a coaching business that offers triathlon training. This month, Play Tri will move into its first triathlontraining center in Hillside Village Shopping Center, at Mockingbird and Hillside.

What is your background as an athlete?

I’ve been a triathlete for 12 years, and I’ve been swimming since I was 2. I was on the Egyptian National Team as a swimmer and then the modern pentathlon team. Then I became an engineer for 15 years or so, and I lost focus on athletics. But I’ve always coached for fun, part-time. I’ve been coaching since I was 16, but I’ve always done it for fun.

Who are your clients now?

We don’t really have famous clients, just age groupers. “Age groupers” are just people like you and me who want to do triathlons. We believe in health and fitness, and we use triathlons as a way to get people healthy. It’s an amateur program to get people to challenge themselves. Along the way, we’ve had people qualify for world competition, but our goal is really to stay healthy. continued on page 14 tion? yes. instead of working from home, we’re centralizing and adding just a little bit more to it with the center. We’ll have a retail area that will carry stuff that nobody else in the metroplex carries. We’re not trying to compete; we’re trying to complete the market. We’ll carry products that have to do with performance that are not carried in any other bike shop or running shop. We’re only the fifth or sixth performance center like this in the whole nation, so we’re attracting a lot of attention, and hopefully that will be good for the whole metroplex. last year, we started a corporate program where we’re trying to help companies get their employees healthy so their health insurance costs will go down. i started that because a client came to me and said, “two of my guys are very big, they’re very unhealthy, and they’re making my insurance costs go up. can you help me?” so we got them to lose weight, and it decreased their health care costs by 50 percent.

Play tri Puts on races and training camPs, along With coaching. What else do you offer?