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Horses, Hyundais, and headless rubber goats: A dispatch from the 5th World Nomad Games

Source: Meduza

Since its debut in Kyrgyzstan 10 years ago, the World Nomad Games has grown into the largest international ethnic sports competition and earned a spot on UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List. This year, more than 2,500 participants from 89 countries came to compete in Astana, hoping to win gold in events ranging from horse racing, archery, and wrestling (or combinations thereof) to strongman competitions and intellectual games. Kazakhstan ultimately topped the table, with 112 medals overall, but the host country offered more than just fierce competition. Journalist Ailis Halligan reports for The Beet.

This story first appeared in The Beet, a weekly email dispatch from Meduza covering Central and Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia. Sign up here to get the next issue delivered directly to your inbox.

Three shiny white Hyundais wrapped in huge red bows sit gleaming on the sidelines of the Kazanat Hippodrome racetrack in south Astana. Twenty or so horses thunder down the long straight in front of crowded stands, where screaming spectators urge on their favorites. The pack rounds the bend and begins the gallop up the far straight, flashing in front of the minarets of the Grand Astana Mosque. The jockeys all ride bareback with a short whip in one hand, and reins made of rope in the other. 

This may seem like your average horse race, except the riders are all around eight years old. 

This is standard for baige, an ancient style of Turkic racing where horses compete over distances of up to 50 kilometers (31 miles), reflecting nomads’ long journeys between settlements. 

The jockeys may have a decade to wait until they can drive, but the proud parents of the gold, silver, and bronze medalists will certainly enjoy cruising home in a new Hyundai, a token of gratitude from President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev for their sons’ honorable contribution to Kazakhstan’s nomadic legacy.

This is the World Nomad Games — an Olympics based on the traditional sports of the Eurasian steppe’s historically nomadic peoples. This year, athletes from 89 countries went head-to-head in 21 events, including baige, horseback wrestling, tug-of-war, horseback archery, and hunting with birds of prey.

“These games are historic, we play them as a hobby,” said Kazakh traditional archer, Yerbol Tapenov. Many of the WNG events originate from ancient steppe pastimes and survival skills, but traditional sports are fast becoming indispensable to Kazakhstan’s contemporary national identity. Traditional archery has existed officially as a sport in Kazakhstan for several years, and competitions have had government support for two years. “Now we have a national team, accreditation, grants, [and] our own kit,” said Tapenov, proudly.

For the vast Turkic world, traditional sports are part of a flourishing common identity used to counterbalance Russian influence in the region. For Central Asian countries in particular, this strengthening affiliation is helping to cast off the remnants of their Soviet past.

Testament to this, the World Nomad Games first appeared a decade ago in Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan’s neighbor to the south, after the Parliamentary Assembly of Turkic States (TURKPA) supported Bishkek’s calls for an international event that doubled as a spectacular ethnosports fest and a vibrant celebration of nomadic culture and identity. 

“This event is very important for the development of these sports,” said Tapenov, alluding to the WNG’s overarching goal of preserving and protecting nomadic and steppe culture. 

The Games have been held four times since: three times on the mountainous shores of Kyrgyzstan’s Issyk-Kul Lake and once in the ancient city of Iznik in western Turkey.

‘The Gathering of the Great Steppe’

“What is special about the fifth Nomad Games?” asked WNG organizer Madina Urazmbetova, as though checking she had heard correctly. “Well, they’re being held in Kazakhstan for the first time, and they’re being held in a metropolis for the first time.”

Kazakhstan’s futuristic economic center of Astana undoubtedly gave this year’s games a modern twist, though it’s not the most likely location for celebrating ancient civilizations. Nevertheless, “The Gathering of the Great Steppe,” as this year’s tournament was dubbed, brought together more than 250,000 attendees, including some 2,500 athletes, along with media representatives and several world leaders. “Astana is the only city with the potential to host such a large number of visitors,” said Tapenov. “It is the center of our Kazakhstan.” 

The participation of 89 countries marks a huge step up from the inaugural 2014 games when just 19 countries competed. A decade later, the criteria for joining have broadened significantly. “A small sporting event for exclusively historically nomadic peoples has turned into an ‘Olympics of national sports,’ so to speak, in which any country can take part,” Urazmbetova explained. “We have gathered on our land not only the descendants of nomadic peoples but of sedentary peoples, too.” 

The Games’ exclusive opening ceremony, held in the Astana Arena on September 8, showcased both the extraordinary diversity among participants and the hospitality and cultural richness Kazakhstan prides itself on. National teams paraded across the stage to wild applause, waving flags and sporting traditional dress, serenaded by women in Kazakh clothing on white horses. Hundreds of singers and dancers then took to the stage, depicting scenes from Kazakh steppe life and history alongside eagles, camels, and wolves.

In gathering so many nations together, Kazakhstan hoped to create a much-needed space for the harmonious exchange of cultures, ideas, and traditions — an inherent reality of nomadic life. “Sports are a symbol of respect and solidarity. [Their] main purpose is to strengthen friendship among nations,” declared President Tokayev, as he welcomed the foreign guests. 

Across the road from the Kazanat racetrack, the organizers constructed an Ethno-aul (ethnic village) across nearly 25 acres of an abandoned brownfield site. Four life-size models of Soviet spacecraft stood some way away across the scrubby wasteland. But pass through the metal detectors at the village boundary, and a “universe of nomads” materialized before your eyes. 

Reenactors clad in colorful traditional outfits rode horses through the crowd while others stood in the doorways of yurts and sang in enchanting polyphony. Visitors queued for horse milk ice cream, plov (pilaf), shashlik (shish kebab), and, strangely, Papa John’s pizza. Children knocked sheep knuckles out of line in games of assyk atu, while a camel tethered nearby watched on lazily. The Kazakh national anthem floated on the air from the main stage, mingling with the calls of artisans whose stalls sagged under the weight of traditional crafts.

Athletes, spectators, and press alike flocked to the village, drinking in this self-portrait of Kazakhstan. Among them were Mongolian archers, burly cowboys from the Rocky Mountains, VIP sheikhs, and a French all-female fan club dedicated to Kazakh singing sensation Dimash Qudaibergen — the opening ceremony’s star act. “The number of foreign visitors and journalists at the Ethno-aul underscores the very high interest in this event among the foreign audience,” said Urazmbetova.

The love of the game

“I know most of the competitors here, we’re sort of like a big family,” laughed Andrew Ó Donnghaile, the horseback archer spearheading Ireland’s World Nomad Games debut. 

Behind him, his competitors pelted down a straight track, their steeds racing the clock as the riders fired arrows at targets dangling on strings. Given the little-known nature of these traditional sports, it’s not uncommon to see familiar faces at competitions around the world, Ó Donnghaile explained. “You get really quickly connected to the international community,” he said. “Everyone knows everyone.”

Tapenov has also befriended fellow athletes when competing abroad and uses social media to keep in touch. “People practice archery in every country — this unites us,” he said.

The key to the Games’ success, it seems, is a combination of competition and sportsmanship. A culture of solidarity, teamwork, and respect emerges when sports unite people as friends, rather than dividing them as rivals.

Kazakhstan’s 18–0 victory over Team USA in kok-boru, a horseback sport native to Kyrgyzstan, epitomized this spirit of friendship. Both this game and its Kazakh counterpart, kokpar, make for truly sensational viewing as players lunge from their saddles into a forest of horse legs and flailing whips, fighting to retrieve a synthetic goat carcass from the ground. Should they heave the headless dummy off the sand, riders must clamp it under one knee and gallop for their goal, set at either end of the arena.

The away team just couldn’t get the hang of the “pick-up” element of the game, having never played anything resembling kok-boru back in America. It seemed they had been banking on their horsemanship alone, which, although skilled, could not compete with the Kazakhs. “Kazakh players are on such a level that they could have doubled that score,” said Samat Dzhumakadyrov, the spokesman for Kyrgyzstan’s Kok-boru Federation. 

“The countries that play these sports should be nomadic, the sports should be in the blood of the nation, but why not invite the international community to Kazakhstan or Kyrgyzstan to compete here? The most important thing is that players should just love the game,” Dzhumakadyrov added, earnestly.

This is not to say that competitive spirit was thin on the ground, particularly among the Central Asian nations for whom these sports are their lifeblood. Kyrgyzstan cherry-picked its star riders to craft its WNG kokpar squad, hoping to beat rival Kazakhstan at their own sport on home turf. “We don’t have a national team,” Dzhumakadyrov explained. “To make the national squad, the best players and horses are picked from clubs. Like you have Chelsea and Manchester [soccer clubs], right?”

For some athletes, however, the Games were simply a chance to compete alongside their teammates, develop connections, and perhaps even send a message against an increasingly divided geopolitical backdrop. “This is not a very important competition for us,” said a member of the Russian tug-of-war team. “The level is not very high. We came as a kind of PR move and to make friends.” 

“They’re just people who want to do their sport,” said a tugger from the U.K. about his Russian competitors.

The British tug-of-war team, for their part, made quite the impression in Astana, having “stumbled across the Nomad Games” while planning a trip around Central Asia. “We collected a team — Stanley’s cousin, Leon’s brother — and then we got training at home,” said another team member. 

After one of their number fell ill, the U.K. tuggers were forced to recruit a Brit from the embassy in Astana at the last minute to make up their team of eight. The way the Kazakh organizers navigated this hiccup and welcomed the participation of a stray diplomat speaks volumes about a fiercely accommodating competition.

In a refreshing contrast to the high-tech precision and exclusivity of the Paris 2024 Olympics, an event like the WNG brings people back to sports, back to their physical bodies, and back to nature. It’s perhaps symbolic that this year’s event was nearly called off due to catastrophic spring flooding in many of Kazakhstan’s regions — a reminder of humanity’s debt to the natural world, which nomadic peoples take so seriously. 

In 2026, the games will return to their homeland of Kyrgyzstan, a country that sees hosting an event of such cultural magnitude as a great responsibility. “With every year, the scale of these games increases in size, funding, organization, [and] number of athletes,” said Dzhumakadyrov, excitedly. “The sixth Games will be even better, I hope!”

Hello, I’m Eilish Hart, the editor of The Beet. Thanks for taking the time to read our work! Our newsletter delivers underreported stories like this one to subscribers every Thursday. Like all of Meduza’s reporting, it’s free to read but relies on support from readers like you. Please consider donating to our crowdfunding campaign.