No botox-use found at Oman's annual camel beauty pageant

Energy Thursday 25/January/2018 12:03 PM
By: Times News Service
No botox-use found at Oman's annual camel beauty pageant

Muscat: With Saudi Arabia's camel beauty contest being rocked by a Botox scandal, organisers at Oman's own camel pageants have said that no such discrepancies have been found at the ongoing contest in the Sultanate.
While the idea of a camel beauty contest may be bizarre for some, the recent story about 12 camels in Saudi Arabia being disqualified as a result of plastic surgery being performed on them has unsurprisingly created a lot of social media buzz.
Oman is currently holding the annual Camel Beauty Contest, which started on January 21 and will go on until January 25.
According to the Oman Camel Racing Federation, there have been no such disqualifications in the country so far as there are no official tests conducted to check for such discrepencies. "There's no official test for steroids or stimulants in camel beauty contests", said a spokesperson of the Oman Camel Racing Federation.
However, the panel of judges that evaluate the camel on the basis of a number of physical features including, head, ears, lips, neck, tail, etc., are experienced enough to know if they have been injected with drugs to artificially beautify them. "The committees have experience in spotting such cases", she said.
Usually, botox is used to make the lips of the camels look fuller and give it an ideal shape. The committee in-charge of evaluating these camels can often make out by touching the camels face if they have been injected by such neurotoxic protein.
For the races, however, there are proper drugs tests conducted prior to the luxurious camel races in which thousands of rials are involved.
"There are official tests for steroids/stimulants in camel racing contests", said the spokesperson.
12 camels were disqualified in Saudi Arabia for receiving Botox injections at the recently held camel beauty contest where $57 million
is awarded to winners of the contests and camel races and $31.8million in prizes for just pageants.