Kazakhstan gold medal athlete saluted with Borat anthem

Oh God Oh God Oh God.

If it wasn't in mainstream media, I would never believe it.

According to the Telegraph:

Mariya Dmitriyenko had just won the gold medal in the 75 target event at the 10th Arab Shooting Championship in Kuwait and as she stood on the podium with the other medal winners she was expecting to hear the sound of the Kazakhstan national anthem. 

Instead the obscene lyrics of the spoof Kazakhstan anthem from the film Borat began to play...

Uh-oh.

From the Kuwait Times:

The organizing committee of the International Shooting Grand Prix issued a statement yesterday regarding the accidental use of Borat’s parody national anthem in place of Kazakhstan’s real national anthem at a medal ceremony in Kuwait on Thursday. The committee accepted responsibility and offered further apologies for the incident. “The committee gave an official apology to the Kazakh delegation to the tournament, and the national anthem was replayed correctly. The Organizing Committee of the International Grand Prix expresses its utter regret for this unintentional mistake and reaffirms its great respect to its brothers and friends from the Republic of Kazakhstan, and affirms the deep sports relations between the Kazakh and Kuwait shooting federations.”

...Kazakh Foreign Ministry spokesman Ilyas Omarov told the ITAR-Tass news agency the incident “is, of course, a scandal and demands a thorough investigation, which we intend to conduct”. ITAR-Tass quoted shooting team member Oksana Stavitskaya as saying that Asian Shooting Federation President Sheikh Salman Al-Sabah had apologized to the team. “Sheikh Salman personally apologized to us. 

He recognized that the use of the music from the scandalous film in place of the anthem of Kazakhstan was completely a mistake of the organizers. He explained that the awards ceremony was conducted by a firm under contract,” Stavitskaya said. The Kazakh news agency Tengri quoted team Coach Anvar Yunusmetov as saying tournament organizers had downloaded various countries’ national anthems from the Internet, and had also got the Serbian national anthem wrong.

This incident must have added insult to injury in Kazakhstan, where the government threatened to sue Sacha Baron Cohen for his Borat act in "Da Ali G Show" days.

Baron Cohen used the threat as an opportunity to provoke them further:


Borat Response to Kazakhstan Government by BoratSon

When the movie came out, it was not released by the central Asian 20th Century Fox distributor following a request by the Kazakh government, although some Kazakhs apparently find it funny. Gold medalist Maria Dmitrienko seemed to take it well. But her team demanded the medal ceremony be corrected and restaged.

The movie was also banned in most Arab countries, which may explain the blunder.