Camel Races

Camels on the way home after a hard day at the track

Randy atop a dune with camel farm in background

the last race, with human jockeys

midrace- don't they look like greyhounds in motion?

coming around one of the bends

pre-race grooming

3 faces and a hump

the race, camels and cars alike, is in progress

remote jockey getting ready to whip the camel

foaming at the mouth

The Camel Race by Randall D. Ball

Just outside the city of Abu Dhabi, on the mainland of the United Arab Emirates, there’s a desert racetrack. Another couple invited my wife and me there one Friday morning for camel racing. We were the only westerners there, and Christine and Barbara were the only women present. There was no one in the stands. Everyone gathers into their four-wheel drives and follows the track (dirt roads run parallel to either side of the track), rooting for their favorite camel. It was wild. We probably saw five hundred camels that day. They used to use child jockeys from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Indian, and other places, which was sad because when these children, ages five to seven or so, grew too large, they were abandoned. These days the “jockeys” are motorized, robotic little creations strapped to the backs of the camels to apply the whips to the camels’ hindquarters. These camels are all dromedaries (one hump). The Bactrian camels (two humps) are found elsewhere in Asia.
After a dangerous start in which the men who led the camels to the starting gate have to run out of their way, the race was on! The five-kilometer oval track takes the camels and the four-wheel drives only a few minutes to circumnavigate, at approximately thirty-five kilometers an hour (later, the same journey with three, four, or five camels tied together with a real jockey would be twenty kilometers an hour). A camera man, mounted on the top of a truck, followed the lead camel, tracking the race from start to face. The other enthusiasts, in their trucks, would honk at the camels, and I could see a few people operating remote controls from the trucks following the camels. One guy was so into the race that he was whipping his own truck with a stick as he yelled at his camel. Others just honked at their camels to increase their speed. We saw one camel collapse into the barricade and fall; he was lifted out of the racetrack with a machine especially designed for that purpose. Another camel broke through the barrier and just kept going. He galloped across the desert sand, and a group of boys, grinning and obviously excited to undertake the task, chased after the escapee. The strangest thing we saw was the passing of the cake. During the race, while trucks jockeyed for position on the camel racetrack, one man held out a cardboard box with a cake and handed it to a man in another truck. Somehow, they managed to make the exchange without spillage.
After the races, we checked out some of the camels. One group of camels, obviously from one owner, were decked out in beautiful purple fabric and looked pretty regal. Each camel or camel group had its own dress—and each was very colorful. From a spot atop a beautiful sand dune, with our feet entrenched in its warmth, we watched the various herds as they were directed home; it was quite a sight.