Through a cloud of dust in the late afternoon sunshine, Chadian jockeys, some riding bareback, raced their sleek, muscular steeds around the oval track marked out just a few days earlier to the cheers of a large crowd.
Horse racing in the central African country draws the wealthy and elite who venture far from the comforts of the big city to camp out in the bush to enjoy it.
From members of the president’s family to the stable owners, businesspeople, diplomats and high-ranking officials, race season is a prestigious affair in one of the poorest countries in the world.
Photo: AFP
“Winning a race in Chad is like winning the Champions League,” racehorse breeder and owner Amir Adoudou Artine said, puffing on a small cigar, referring to the annual UEFA soccer competition of top-division European clubs.
Less well-heeled racegoers climbed trees or sat on the roofs of 4x4 pickup trucks to get a good view of the Biligoni racecourse, in a town midway between the bush and the desert in the southwest of the Barh el Gazel region.
Horse racing in Chad evolved decades ago from links with its former colonial ruler France, which has suffered a series of setbacks in the turbulent Sahel recently as Chad and others have ended military cooperation with Paris.
Photo: AFP
This year’s location was chosen as it is the home of Idriss Ahmed Idriss, a racehorse owner who is head of an association promoting improvements in horse breeding in Chad. He is also head of the Bank of Central African States.
Ahmed Idriss said he breeds his animals “the traditional way,” placing each mare and her foal with a cattle breeder who feed them whey and cereals, mainly millet. But such traditions could be in danger — not least because younger generations are less interested, owners grumble.
Come nightfall, everyone gathered around a campfire and discussed their predictions for the next day’s racing over endless cups of hot tea.
Photo: AFP
Sudanese tunes and French classics from the 1980s played in the background, and mutton boiled with spices, onions and tomato puree was served up from dawn until dusk. Betting plays no part in the traditional race meetings. The race season started in late November.
Horse racing in Chad has a “tormented history in this region,” Ahmed Idriss said, talking about its cattle rustling past.
“Good horses were needed to steal the cattle or run away,” added the 50-year-old, whose nickname “Cowboy Idriss” was coined in his teens when he bought his first horse at the age of 15.
His face lit up as he recalled seeing as a child “great horse parades during national holidays” and shows displaying historic horsemanship from North Africa.
Adoudou Artine, who is about to turn 55, also fondly reminisced that the races were “a place where you could discover modern life.”
Horse racing began in Chad at the end of the 1960s, initially with horses imported from France to be cross bred with local ones. The preference has since shifted to Sudanese breeds, but rainfall, horse flu and successive conflicts and clashes have weighed heavily on the popular pastime.
Younger people “prefer to play football, play cards, travel or buy cars,” lamented another owner in his 50s.
A sense of doom has grown that racing enthusiasts in Chad are a dying breed.
“Every time an owner dies or leaves, there is no replacement,” Adoudou Artine said, sitting by the fire.
Steep costs are also a hurdle, with a horse carrying a price tag of 1 million to 10 million CFA francs (US$1,601 to US$16,011). Then there is the food, upkeep and staffing to pay for.
“There are about 40 of us in N’Djamena and there were about twice as many 15 years ago,” Adoudou Artine said. “We are the last of the Mohicans.”
ANFIELD BLUES: Kylian Mbappe arrived at Anfield on a run of 21 goals in 17 games, but he managed just three attempts in the match, none of them hitting the target Kylian Mbappe has been nearly unstoppable this season, but he hit a roadblock in their UEFA Champions League match at Anfield on Tuesday. For the second year running, the Real Madrid forward had a night to forget at Merseyside as Liverpool won 1-0. Mbappe looked a shadow of the player who has been tearing defenses apart all season. “We were lacking that threat in the final third,” said Madrid coach Xabi Alonso, without naming Mbappe individually. The FIFA World Cup winner for France rarely looked capable of finding a breakthrough against a Liverpool team who have been so defensively fragile for much of the
LOCAL SUCCESS: In the doubles, Taiwan’s Hsieh Su-wei and Jelena Ostapenko of Latvia defeated Italians Sara Errani and Jasmine Paolini in straight sets Elena Rybakina on Monday punched her ticket to the WTA Finals last four with an impressive 3-6, 6-1, 6-0 victory over second seed Iga Swiatek in round-robin play in Riyadh. After cruising past Amanda Anisimova in her opener on Saturday, Rybakina claimed her second win of the week to guarantee herself top spot in the Serena Williams Group. Anisimova on Monday rallied back from a set and a break down to triumph 4-6, 6-3, 6-2 in her all-American battle with seventh seed Madison Keys, who has been eliminated from the competition. “Madi was playing so well, it was quite a battle out there,”
For almost 30 minutes, Vitomir Maricic did not take a breath. Face down in a pool, surrounded by anxious onlookers, the Croatian freediver fought spasming pain to redefine what doctors thought was possible. When he finally surfaced, he had smashed the previous Guinness World Record for the longest breath-hold underwater by nearly five minutes. However, even with the help of pure oxygen before the attempt, it had pushed him to the limit. “Everything was difficult, just overwhelming,” Maricic, 40, told reporters, reflecting on the record-breaking day on June 14. “When I dive, I completely disconnect from everything, as if I’m not even there.
An amateur soccer league organized by farmers, students and factory workers in rural China has unexpectedly drawn millions of fans and inspired big cities to form their own, raising hopes China can grow talent from the ground up and finally become a global force. The nation of 1.4 billion people has about 200 million soccer fans, more than any other country, but it has failed to build world-class teams, partly due to a top-down approach where clubs pick players from a very small pool of prescreened candidates. The professional game is marred by a history of fixed matches, corruption, and dismal performances,
RSS