Local Spotlight: Sarah Collins, the Woman Who Made History in UAE's First Female Camel Race!

WOW!

Sarah Collins won the country’s first licensed female camel championship race on October 22 at Al Marmoom Racetrack in Dubai!

Collins was one of eight female jockeys to pass the Dubai Camel Racing Society’s licensing exam, allowing them to compete in the championship race – the first of a flat-race series that will run until April of next year. The jockeys are from New Zealand, Germany, Poland, Russia, and Ireland, among other places.

“It’s like riding a bullet,” Collins says of the race, in which camels reach speeds of up to 45 km/h over a 1,200-metre course. “It’s the closest I’ve come to flying on land. I felt very honoured to cross that finish line in first place.”

The race, according to Collins, was historic because it demonstrated to the predominantly male jockeys, farm owners, sponsors, and trainers that women deserve their own championship race series in the centuries-old Emirati sport.

“For me, this was more important than winning. Even now, when we are training, our male peers will stare and [film] us because they have never seen women race camels before. The pressure to prove ourselves outweighed any competitive angle and, more importantly, we gained a level of respect that we hadn’t received before.”

Sarah Collins celebrates her win in the first official camel race for women held in the United Arab Emirates.

Collins credits her victory to three times a week of speed training on camels. She moved to Dubai in 2018 to work as a primary school teacher at the Australian International School in Sharjah after competing as a horse rider in New Zealand. Collins also participates in Tough Mudder obstacle races in the UAE on a monthly basis and enjoys scuba diving, bouldering, and pole dancing in addition to horseback riding.

Her camel racing career began when she met Linda Krockenberger, a German who had teamed up with Emirati camel farm owner Obaid Bin Subaih Al Falasi to open the Arabian Desert Camel Riding Centre, which taught men, women, and children how to ride, handle, and race camels.

Collins joined the school in May. “I had always wanted to learn how to ride a camel properly, to gallop on a camel, but I never dreamt I would make history by winning the first-ever licensed female race.”