More than 30,000 curious spectators turned out at a Berlin horse track Sunday to watch 25 unpredictable camels take part in what the organizers said were the first camel races ever held in northern Europe.
Horse races they were not. Two camels sat down on the track in the middle of a warm-up lap, and it took 15 minutes to get them moving again, while another stopped six feet from the finish and had to be prodded over the line by its jockey to win its race.Nor could the crowd place bets. "It's a shame we can't place any bets," said Werner Kiesling, a 63-year-old retired teacher. "The camels would be ideal for bets because you never know what they are going to do in the middle of the race."
But, under a blue sky and in temperatures above 90 degrees that the camels probably enjoyed more than the spectators, the 900-pound animals delighted the crowd.
Trotting at between 15 to 30 mph around the 1.5-mile grass track, the camels ran in eight races carrying young German women as jockeys.
The camels live on Europe's only camel farm in the southern German town of Rotfelden.
"They are such beautiful animals," said Monika Reineck, a 40-year-old office worker. "This is a spectacle I just couldn't miss. . . . You have to have a good sense of humor to enjoy this."
The lead would change hands repeatedly during the one-lap races as camels would bolt forward with bursts of supercharged energy for short distances and then slow dra-ma-tically.