Camel racing
Camel races are an alternative to horse racing , especially in the Arab countries and Australia . Perhaps the most popular camel races take place in the Emirates' capital Abu Dhabi and in Dubai .
In Saudi Arabia , camel racing is a national sport . They accompany the festivals of many Bedouin tribes . There is also a camel racing tradition elsewhere or camel races as part of traditional festivals such as the annual camel festival in Pushkar (India).
The camels can reach speeds of up to 40 miles per hour. Young animals, mostly three or four years old, cover distances of up to ten kilometers. The fastest racing camels pay sums of almost three million dollars.
In Germany, too, camel races have occasionally taken place. B. in Cologne-Weidenpesch as early as 1969.
Child labor up to camel
In professional races, children often replace the riders, which is rare today. In many cases, children from countries such as Pakistan and Bangladesh were used, who were practically sold as slaves to camel racing organizers by their poor families . In response to criticism of these practices, Qatar and the United Arab Emirates banned the use of children in camel races and even returned some of the children to Pakistan. Today robots are replacing the children of camel jockey in these Arab countries.
Age of the camel jockey robot
The camel jockey robots are largely remote-controlled, so that some lavishly endowed camel races are now characterized by the fact that the sheikhs who own the racing stables are chauffeured in their desert dust-proof, air-conditioned limousines and SUVs on a street parallel to the racetrack or the field of galloping camels at their speed in the direction of the race to get the maximum performance out of your own camel in the race by remote control and to control the success up close.
variants
Long-distance competitions have also existed, see z. B. English language Wikipedia, " The Great Australian Camel Race ", an article about a race that took place in 1988 over several weeks and thousands of kilometers to remember the importance of imported camels as a means of transport in the construction of modern Australia at the end of the 19th century. The race had 69 participants, 28 of whom crossed the finish line.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Gundula Madeleine Tegtmeyer: Camel races on the Sinai - A question of honor. In: Der Spiegel . January 11, 2010, accessed March 9, 2020 .
- ↑ Doron Peskin: UAE: 3 camels sold for $ 6.5 million. In: Ynetnews . October 2, 2010, accessed March 9, 2020 .
- ↑ Inge Wozelka: Cologne totally curious - 50 years ago: How Weidenpesch became a camel racetrack. In: Express . October 3, 2019, accessed March 9, 2020 .
- ↑ The return of the kidnapped child jockeys. In: WOZ The weekly newspaper . July 7, 2005, accessed on March 9, 2020 (edition 27/2005).
- ^ Jérémy Tordjman: Camel races - robots replace children. In: Der Spiegel . June 15, 2006, accessed March 9, 2020 .
- ↑ Camel racing: a tradition becomes a high-tech sport. In: World of Wonders . January 5, 2018, accessed March 9, 2020 .