I think the image that won deserved a blue BUT so does this image. It was a 9 from me and frankly I thought you were going to walk away with it. Powerful image.
This is by far the best capture in the challenge, the subject and the framing are ideal. It only suffers from editing ( a bit of a halo around the camels legs and not quite enough contrast in the background to get true blacks) a slight re-edit and this would be perfect.