Camel racing with robot jockeys hopes to draw World Cup crowds

Sitting in a white 4×4 pickup truck, Nasser al-Marri watched his remote-controlled camel race through the Qatari desert and insisted that sport makes football meaningless, by comparison.

As Qatar prepares for the arrival of more than a million fans for the World Cup, the camel racing track in Al-Shahaniya hopes to gain a boost with the world’s most popular sport.

“Camels are part of us. They are our greatest passion,” said Nasser, 23, sitting in a vehicle with three other camel trainers, the “mudammer”, at the track 40 km east of the capital, Doha.

Driving parallel to the track, they control little robot jockeys on the camels’ backs and make them pick up speed – a modern innovation to replace the child jockeys that used to perform the dangerous activity.

“It’s the number one sport in the Gulf,” said Nasser, while the four youngsters – like most of the country – are anxiously awaiting the Cup, which starts on Sunday (20).

Abdallah Hafiz, 21, said he will support the Netherlands and hopes many football fans will come to the track “to discover the sport of our ancestors”.

In a small cafe near the track, Ali al-Marri, 66, sipping a traditional Arabic coffee, told AFP that he started camel racing “before Doha became what it is today”.

He recalled the times when there were no racetracks and competitions were not divided into categories by size, age and gender. Jockeys simply raced in gardens and parks near Doha.

His father passed that passion on to him, said Ali, who is now “retired”.

In addition to training the animals, “mudammers” are also responsible for ensuring the health and well-being of the camels. “It’s an expensive sport, but camels are my whole life,” said Ali.

When the race ended, Abu Hussein, a 35-year-old Sudanese man, and other foreign workers took the robot jockeys off the camels and guided the animals back to one of the many stables in Al-Shahaniya.

‘Million Dollars’

Property owner Abdallah Hafiz, 52, said camel racing takes money, effort and perseverance.

The price of a camel starts at around US$10,000 (R$53,000), and training and care costs at least US$1,500 (R$8,000) a month, he explained. But for a winning camel, “there is no price limit, which can exceed US$ 1 million [R$ 5,3 milhões]🇧🇷

Betting is prohibited in the Islamic country, but valuable prizes are disputed, usually offered by the ruling family, which sponsors the traditional sport.

A $100,000 (R$530,000) luxury car is a common prize, but for some national or regional races it can be “from several dozen to 200 vehicles, or even more,” Hafiz said.

Until two decades ago, jockeys were children brought from poor countries. The lighter they were, the better their chances.

But the countries of the Gulf banned this practice, giving in to international pressure, after deadly accidents and abuse by some parents who deprived their children of food so that they would not gain weight.

Now it’s the robots who apply the whip cracks to the camels.

Hafiz’s nephew Mohamed, 27, a former footballer who was with his uncle in Al-Shahaniya, said both sports required rigorous training and “great attention”.

But unlike some trainers, the retired Nasser says, “Football doesn’t interest me. The only sport for me is racing, and when I’m next to my camel I feel like the whole world is mine.”

Neymar was there

In the back seat of Nasser’s car, Ahmad Ali, 18, showed a video on his mobile phone of Brazilian star Neymar visiting Al-Shahaniya with Paris Saint-Germain squad in 2019 for a special race in his honor .

“I hope that Neymar returns with his Brazilian teammates and that other teams come to Al-Shahaniya to discover our national sport and its festive atmosphere,” said Ahmad.

_{Translation of Luiz Roberto M. Gonçalves}