Orry the Oryx Statue

The oversized statue of Orry the Oryx — mascot of the 2006 Asian Games — stands near Aspire Zone in southern Doha. The animal itself, the Arabian Oryx, is Qatar's national symbol: a pale, long-horned antelope of the desert that was hunted to extinction in Qatar in the early 1970s and has since been reintroduced through captive breeding.

The statue is a cheerful piece of public art in a city that tends toward the monumental. It marks the location of the 2006 games infrastructure and is a common stopping point for families visiting the Aspire Zone. The real oryx can be seen at Al Khor Zoo and at the Al Maha Wildlife Sanctuary near the Inland Sea.

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Orry was the mascot of the 2006 Doha Asian Games — a cartoon oryx wearing the traditional Qatari thobe and ghutra, designed to be recognisable and approachable to a large multinational games audience. The statue, erected after the games, stands 30 feet tall. The actual Arabian Oryx became extinct in the wild in 1972 and the species was reintroduced to the region through zoo breeding programmes starting in the 1980s.

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