Borat anthem stuns Kazakh gold medallist in Kuwait
- 23 March 2012
- From the section Middle East
Kazakhstan's shooting team has been left stunned after a comedy national anthem from the film Borat was played at a medal ceremony at championships in Kuwait instead of the real one.
The team asked for an apology and the medal ceremony was later rerun.
The team's coach told Kazakh media the organisers had downloaded the parody from the internet by mistake.
The song was produced by UK comedian Sacha Baron Cohen for the film, which shows Kazakhs as backward and bigoted.
Footage of Thursday's original ceremony posted on YouTube shows gold medallist Maria Dmitrienko listening to the anthem without emotion and finally smiling as it ends.
Coach Anvar Yunusmetov told Kazakh news agency Tengrinews that the tournament's organisers had also got the Serbian national anthem wrong.
"Then Maria Dmitrienko's turn came," he said. "She got up on to the pedestal and they played a completely different anthem, offensive to Kazakhstan."
The spoof song praises Kazakhstan for its superior potassium exports and for having the cleanest prostitutes in the region.
The film Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, released in 2006, follows Baron Cohen's character, the journalist Borat Sagdiyev, as he travels to the US and pursues the actress Pamela Anderson.
The film outraged people in Kazakhstan and was eventually banned in the country. The government also threatened Baron Cohen with legal action.
Reports say the film is also banned in Kuwait.