MOSCOW Maria Dmitrienko won a gold medal for Kazakhstan on Thursday at the Arab Shooting Championships in Kuwait, but during the award ceremony the public address system broadcast the spoof anthem from the Sacha Baron Cohen comedy Borat, instead of the actual Kazakh national anthem. Kazakhstan has called the playing of a spoof of its national anthem at an international sporting event a scandal and demanded an investigation of the incident. Six years after the release of Baron Cohens spoof movie Borat, which offended many Kazakhs at the time, the international community is apparently still mistaking the degenerate portrayal from the movie for the real Kazakhstan. A film has been uploaded to YouTube in which one can see Dmitrienko standing on the winners podium, listening to the words of the spoof, Kazakhstan is the largest country in the world. All the other countries are run by little girls. Kazakhstan is first in the world in producing potassium. Dmitrienko kept her cool during the incident, betraying no obvious emotions and standing perfectly still on the award podium. 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 Sheik Salman al-Sabah had apologized to the team. Sheik 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. Later on Saturday, the events organizers in Kuwait also apologized to the Kazakh delegation regarding the unintentional mistake of playing the wrong national anthem during the awards ceremony, according to the statement published on the state-owned Kuwait News Agency. The Organizing Committee, in a statement, said the mistake was corrected and the national anthem of Kazakhstan was replayed afterward. The committee expressed deep sorrow for the mistake and reaffirmed that ties between the sporting communities of the two countries remained strong.
