Camel Races

December 10th I joined a group to go and see camel racing.  The outing had been organized by the AWARE Center. (Advocates for Western Arab Relations.)  Using 2 big touring buses, the group went out past the 7th Ring Road to I believe the Al-Atraf Camel Racing Club.  Since this trip was sponsored by the AWARE Center, we knew that we would actually see some racing.  There was an inside sitting area, the club house I guess, that came complete with couches, soft chairs and TV monitors.TV monitors were set up so that a people in the club house could follow the race from start to finish.  Since a race might be as along as 10 km, this is a good thing. 

I was able to see 3 races - but just the finish, since I was outside taking pictures and not near the TV monitors.  In fact it wasn't until someone pointed out the dust in the distance that we realized that a race had actually started.  The camels are ridden by a robot dressed in various colours.  I wonder if these different colours are similar to the silks worn by jockeys.  Silks are the racing colors of the owner of the horse they are riding.  Apparently in earlier times child jockeys were used, but several world organizations voiced concern about the safety of the jockeys, and now we have robots.  With  the robots, however, comes a traffic jam of vehicles following the camels, with humans working the robots to urge the camels on.  All in all, quite a spectacle.

He lost his race.  His punishment - dress up so that all the tourists can take his picture.

The 3 pictures above are camels being led to the start line.  Notice the "nosebags" that are on the camels in the above picture.  I don't think that there is food in the bag since "Traditionally, a racing camel was fed on dates, honey, alfalfa, milk and seeds. They were never allowed to drink the day before a race and were prevented from feeding for the 12 hour prior to a race."  http://www.camelphotos.com/racing_camels.html

In the above pictures the camels are racing to the finish.  Notice the robots placed behind the camel's hump.

If you look really closely in the picture above, you can see vehicles in the distance.  These are the vehicles that are following the camels and operating the robots.  In the picture below, you can see that the vehicles are on both sides of the track with the camels racing between the vehicles.

And the winner by a nose is...