Watch Paparazzi

Entrepreneur Ahmed Abouhashima spotted wearing Richard Mille

Ahmed Abouhashima, the Egyptian entrepreneur who built his way from steel worker to chairman of one of the Middle East's most prominent industrial groups, was recently spotted wearing a Richard Mille RM61-01 Yohan Blake — a watch that, like its owner, carries serious technical credentials beneath a striking exterior.

The RM61-01 was developed in collaboration with Jamaican sprint legend Yohan Blake, a two-time Olympic gold medallist, and first presented in 2014. The watch is built around Richard Mille's signature tonneau-shaped case, with the bezel and caseback crafted from black TZP ceramic — tetragonal zirconia polycrystal — a material originally developed for high-stress industrial and biomedical applications. TZP ceramic offers exceptional scratch resistance, low density, and thermal stability, making it one of the most demanding materials to machine in fine watchmaking. The irony of a steel industry executive wearing a watch defined by advanced ceramics is not lost.

At the heart of the RM61-01 sits calibre RM61-01, a manually wound tourbillon movement visible through the skeletonized dial. The movement features a variable-geometry rotor, a function selector, and a free-sprung balance wheel — all hallmarks of the brand's sport-oriented high complications. Shock resistance is rated to 5,000 Gs, a specification validated through rigorous testing protocols the brand developed alongside its athlete ambassadors.

From a collector standpoint, the RM61-01 occupies a specific niche within the Richard Mille catalogue: it offers tourbillon complexity, genuine materials innovation, and a named athletic partnership without reaching into the extreme pricing of the RM27 series or the limited-edition RM50s. That relative accessibility — in Richard Mille terms — has made it a consistent target for serious collectors in the Gulf and wider MENA region, where the brand commands particularly strong cultural cachet.

Abouhashima's trajectory — from industrial worker in 1996 to leading one of the region's largest manufacturing enterprises — gives the choice of this watch a certain biographical logic. The RM61-01 Yohan Blake carries a grey-market valuation of approximately $140,000 USD, reflecting stable demand for ceramic-cased tourbillon references from the brand's core sport collection.