Saudis get the hump with camel beauty contest cheats
Breeders kicked out of prestigious £50m festival and blacklisted over the use of cosmetic procedures
SAUDI Arabia declared war on cosmetically enhanced camels yesterday as it banned 40 of the animals from a beauty pageant for receiving Botox injections and facelifts.
In the biggest crackdown so far on rule breaking at the King Abdulaziz Camel Festival, Saudi authorities also ejected breeders who used muscleboosting hormones and inflated camel body parts.
The animals compete each year for a $66million (£50million) prize pot and the title of “Miss Camel,” with judges assessing the shape of their heads and humps.
In recent years, rogue breeders have tried to turn the odds in their favour via cosmetic surgery, with some even tying rubber bands around body parts to enlarge them.
SPA, the Saudi state news agency, has warned that the pageant’s organisers will “impose strict penalties on manipulators”, adding that the “club is keen to halt all acts of tampering and deception in the beautification of camels”.
It also warned that “specialised and advanced” technology to detect illegal enhancements was being deployed.
In recent years, Saudi Arabia has
‘We have found at least one and sometimes two cheats a day’
reportedly used ultrasound scans to detect traces of lip-filler and other enhancements in camels.
X-ray machines can also be used to confirm whether a camel has received cosmetic surgery around its nose and ears, according to the Lonely Planet travel guide. Owners can face a fine of up to 100,000 Saudi riyals (£20,000).
Camels found to have been given the enhancements are banned from competing for two years and in some cases are added to a blacklist.
Camel rearing is a lucrative industry in Saudi Arabia and among other Arab states such as Sudan and Oman, which has led to beauty pageants being set up across the region.
The King Abdulaziz festival aims to preserve and highlight the role of camels in the Bedouin traditions of Saudi Arabia, which also hosts camel races and camel auctions.
In January 2018, The Telegraph was granted access to a camel beauty pageant, where judges boasted of their skill in catching out Botox users.
“We have the top experts in the world, and they are very good at spotting the cheats,” one judge said at a competition in Al-rumahiya.
“We have found at least one and sometimes two a day. The camel is a symbol of Saudi Arabia. We used to preserve it out of necessity, now we preserve it as a pastime.”
While camels were first domesticated on the Arabian Peninsula about 4,000 years ago, the first King Abdulaziz festival was held only two decades ago.
In recent years, camel contests have begun to foster regional rivalry between Gulf states. The United Arab Emirates hosts its own competition, the Madinat Zayed Camel Beauty Pageant.
However, the prize pot is substantially lower than the one on offer at the King Abdulaziz festival at just $30 million (£22million). Last January, the Royal Camel Corps in Oman held a similar beauty pageant in which a camel named al-dhabi was declared the victor. His owner accepted a vehicle as first prize, according to the Oman Observer.
According to The National, an Emirati newspaper, some camel owners are opposed to the ban on cosmetic procedures and have defended them on aesthetic grounds.
Ali Al Mazrouei, a prominent breeder, told the newspaper that Botox could be used to smoothe out a camel’s jawline.
“It makes the head more inflated so it’s like, ‘Oh look at how big that head is. It has big lips, a big nose’,” he said.