Helping Camel Jockeys

Robot Jockeys Give Camel Racing a Modern Twist

Morning Edition, May 22, 2007 - Camel racing is an ancient sport that remains highly popular among the Arabs of the Persian Gulf, but it's been criticized by human rights groups because of the jockeys: young boys secured to the saddles with Velcro. Now robot jockeys are transforming the traditional sport...cont.

Camel Racing in the UAE

Throughout the Arab world the Bedouin culture is revered for its freedom of movement, its emphasis on close family and tribal ties, its closeness to the natural beauty of the desert and its interdependent relationship to the camel...cont.

Poverty Ensnares Children In Camel Jockey Trade

KARACHI, Pakistan, (Jun. 14) IPS/GIN - Sehr, 14, has a toy camel he plays with. "I bought this toy camel with the money I earned there. I raced my camels with other kids," he adds. Along with the toys, he bought watches for his parents as gifts...cont.

Banning child jockeys a step in the right direction

June 12, 2006 Emirates News Agency (WAM) --The United Arab Emirates has repatriated 1,075 children to their original countries since a decision to ban use of children as camel jockeys was enforced...cont.

Robot Jockeys to Ride Gulf Camels

BBC News...cont.

Further Reading

Robot Jockeys Replace Kids in Camel Races; Machines Take Over After Complaints Children in Saddle Were Exploited

By Hilary Brown, ABC News, December 9, 2006
For years, jockeys in Middle East camel races were small children, some as young as five, who were brought from South Asia and virtually enslaved. But now, protests from human rights groups that the child jockeys were being exploited have forced a remarkable solution -- robot jockeys....get the article

Robot Jockeys

By Robert Mackey, New York Times, December 11, 2005
When the new camel-racing got underway recently in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, spectators with sharp vision noticed that something was up with the freshman class of jockeys. They were robots...get the article

Racing in Rhythm in the UAE

Saudi Aramco World, May/June 2001
It is fitting that the UAE's first major camel-racing track was built where the modern city gives way to the desert and the camels can be seen in silhouette against skyscrapers. Here as elsewhere around the Arabian Gulf, camel racing has become a sport where old traditions have taken on modern trappings, where the animal that once appeared in danger of losing its place in an ever-modernizing society is finding a vital new role...get the article

Lulu, Queen of the camels

The Atlantic Monthly, October 1999
Julian Skidmore, an Englishwoman known to everyone as Lulu, has emerged during the past few years as among the foremost practitioners in one of the world's more improbable growth industries. The demands of camel racing have created, almost overnight, a thriving new field of biological endeavor-one that has proved irresistible even to researchers who began their careers with a different focus entirely...get the article