Nomad Games

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Sixth World Nomad Games open in Bishkek Kyrgyz capital.

Athletes will compete in 43 disciplines rooted in Great Steppes ancient nomadic culture.

Equestrian competitions form the heart of the programme. Races run to six, ten and eleven kilometres — distance valued over speed in Central Asian horse culture, where breeds are prized for their capacity to cover vast ground in a single day.
Horsemen also compete in wrestling and archery on horseback, team games involving herding animals across a field, and picking objects from the ground at full gallop.

Amongst ground disciplines there are six styles of national wrestling, archery, tug of war, arm wrestling and weightlifting.

The traditional core nations — Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Mongolia, China and Russia are joined this year by expanded list of newcomers.

Australia, New Zealand, Algeria, Burundi, Gambia, Jordan, Egypt, Cabo Verde, Côte d'Ivoire, Oman, Uganda, Ethiopia, North Macedonia and UK are among those competing for the first time.
The UK has sent a team of more than 50 athletes, Australia 9.

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Horseback archery, kok-boru, golden eagle hunting, tug of war and cattle vertebrae breaking.



Here the archers actually use proper Asian shooting style.

[Black Orchid]

Cattle vertebrae breaking? Seriously? What sort of 'sport' is that?

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Cattle vertebrae breaking? Seriously? What sort of 'sport' is that?

Anthropologists say this sport is ritual that came from the earliest form of religious thought like animism when humans believed that animals, plants, and objects have a spiritual essence. According to ancient shamanic beliefs, the “spirit of an animal lives in the spine”. Nomads believed that by cleanly shattering the spinal bone, they were performing a sacred ritual that helped the animal's “soul to be reborn faster and move to another world.”