Instead of the sombre tones of the real national anthem, Kazakh gold medallist Maria Dmitrienko had to listen to Borat’s English-language lyrics on the cleanliness of prostitutes in Kazakhstan, according to the Telegraph. Kazakh officials have described the mix-up on Thursday at the Arab Rifle Shooting Championship as a disgrace and called for an investigation. “It is, of course, a scandal and demands a thorough investigation which we intend to conduct,” Kazakh foreign ministry spokesman Ilyas Omara told the Russian ITAR-Tass news agency. Former Soviet Kazakhstan is Central Asia’s largest economy and hopes to become one of the world’s top energy exporters by 2020. Only 20 years old, Kazakhstan is a young country and it has been desperate to shake off the image of the boorish Kazakh Borat since he emerged on British television in the mid-2000s. Borat was the creation of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. In 2006 he released a feature length film of Borat’s trip across the United States entitled “Borat: Cultural Learnings of America Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan”. Anvar Ynusmetov, the head of the Kazakh rifle shooting team, said the Kuwaitis had apologised for the mix up. He blamed local officials downloading the wrong anthem from the internet for the error. This is the second very public mix up over the Kazakh national anthem this year. Earlier in the year at the opening ceremony of a ski championship in the northern Kazakh region of Kostanay, a pop song by the Puerto-Rican singer Ricky Martin briefly replaced the national anthem while local officials stood to attention.
