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Back Cover Letter from Lausanne
October 12th, 2005 -- Improbable though it may seem Lausanne was recently the site of a camel race meeting. Two races were held in order to show off a new robot jockey designed to do away with at least some of the problems posed by the use of child riders, a custom that remains prevalent in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. The legal situation concerning the employment of children as racing jockeys is unclear. In the UAE, the minimum age for riders is theoretically 16 and their minimum imposed weight, again theoretically, 45kg. But stories are rife of children as young as seven being bought from poor families, or even kidnapped, in Pakistani and Indian villages; the enticements to parents often include promises of education, as well as cash. The novelty of riding even the most beautiful camel soon wears off for most, as the underfed children (they mustn’t gain weight) grow just enough to realize what has happened to them. There are relatively few camel-owners who fulfil the promises given to the boys’ parents to assure them a good home and education. Several international agencies have tried for years to do something about this state of affairs, including UNICEF, the Anti-Slavery Trust and the small but tightly focused Ansar Burney Welfare Trust. But very recently there has been progress. The state of Qatar announced in May that the employment of young child jockeys would be banned from the opening of the coming winter racing season, in October. To accompany the ban, the Ministry of Sport in Doha ordered a first shipment of 150 robot jockeys from a Swiss engineering company, with a further option for 2,000 more to be delivered over the next year. And that is where Lausanne comes into the story. The robot, whose prototype is named Little Kamel, was designed and built here by a start-up company called K-Team. Little Kamel weighs about the same as a properly fed three-year-old, but at 15kg is considerably lighter than the adolescent jockeys who will, presumably, remain legal in the camel racing world. It may not have a real brain, but it is designed and programmed to be “driven” — something like a remote-controlled miniature car — by the camel’s owner, usually from one of the cars bowling along beside the track. That will require some skill. And finally, from a distance, the robot — made to be strapped onto a racing saddle with relatively little modification — really does, from the middle distance, look very much like a small jockey, complete with racing silks and a little whip under its right “elbow”. The Lausanne demonstration races were run among lush meadows near the largest horse stables in the region. There were major differences with real races in Qatar. Considering the difficulties, veterinary and other, of importing proper racing camels from the Gulf, the four rather unprepossessing beasts that lumbered around the track came from a “camel farm” near the border where Germany and Austria meet Switzerland. They were Tunisian dromedaries usually employed in giving tourists their first taste of riding a hump and had neither the temperament nor the anatomy of racing beasts. In addition, the distance, instead of being 5km or more, was just 400 metres. Considering all of this, the results were less spectacular than in earlier trials near Doha, where Little Kamel had performed very well under more realistic conditions. In Lausanne, Little Kamel sadly finished last in the first race. He made up for it in the second race, however, coming in first. At around €15,000 a piece, Little Kamel and his mates are reportedly considered a bargain among the camel-racing fraternity. |
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