Talk about awkward. Recently, Borat’s version of the Kazakhstan anthem was played during a medal ceremony in Kuwait accidentally.
Surprisingly, the incident wasn’t the work of Sacha Baron Cohen.
Organizers for Kuwait’s 10th Arab Shooting Championship were reportedly behind the mix-up. According to reports, the organizers downloaded the parody from the Internet by mistake.
And it wasn’t their only anthem mix up, they downloaded the wrong one for another team too. They also reportedly got the Serbian anthem wrong.
The embarrassing mix-up happened Thursday when according to E!, Kazakhstan shooting-team member Maria Dmitrienko hit the stage to accept her gold medal.
As she stood on the platform, the spoof version of the Kazakhstan anthem began playing. Dmitrienko played it cool, so it seemed, keeping her hand on her chest for the remainder of the song and even smiling when the song ended.
Reportedly, the team later asked for an apology and the medal ceremony was rerun.
According to BBC, Coach Anvar Yunusmetov told Kazakh news agency Tengrinews, “She got up on to the pedestal and they played a completely different anthem, offensive to Kazakhstan.”
The song is from 2006 movie Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan, which was eventually banned in the country.
“Kazakhstan’s prostitutes cleanest in the region, except of course Turkmenistan’s,” is just one of the offensive lines in the spoof song.
According to BBC, the movie was reportedly also banned in Kuwait, which explains a lot.
Making matters worse, the whole incident was taped and later posted to the Internet. Since going viral, it has collected over 1 million views. Check it out.
