Qatar: Camel Racing

       I've always been curious to see a camel race but I don't know where is it, how far is it from the city and how often they do the race. One weekend, me and my couchsurfing friend, Michal, decided to do a roadtrip with no destination at all. The plan--to drive outside Doha and see some nice beaches and a camel race. He basically knew where is it because he's been there for a couple of times.

       We reached the race track at 8am and sad to say there's no scheduled race in the morning. We were told that there will be a race in the afternoon at 2:00pm so that means that we have to come back. We have seen some handlers with their camels doing some practices on the track.

    Camel racing has been around for thousands of years. The "Sport of Sheiks" almost exclusively utilized small children, usually boys around the age of four, to ride and direct the camels. Many of the boys used for the races were often sold to race organizers or camel owners, and there was an active child slave trade for camel jockeys, involving victims of kidnapping. While this was already illegal, Qatar has now introduced severe punishments for anyone caught using child jockeys, and is going to greater lengths to enforce these laws, in contrast to some other countries in the area. Happily, when we were at the track we saw no child jockeys, and there were plenty of police to make sure everyone was obeying the law.
     Replacing the children are robot jockeys. These are controlled by the camels’ owners who are following in the four wheel drive vehicles. Not only can the owners control the robots’ arms to whip the camels and pull the reins, they can also hurl abuse at the camels through speakers.

       At the start of the race, camels are accompanied by older camels and their jockeys. At a certain point they are released, and only followed by their owners. When the owners press the whip, the whip hand of the jockeys whirs round with an electric sound that can be heard clearly from the side of the race track, cracking the camel with a series of whacks on its rear end. You can get up close for the start and finish of the camel race, or watch it safely from the stadium.

For more information about the schedule and the race, you can ring +974 44 87 2028

Below is the mini movie of the race. Enjoy!