Fifth World Nomad Games to Include 20 National Sports

ASTANA – The fifth World Nomad Games will feature 20 traditional competitive sports, reported the games’ press service on Jan. 6. Those include horse races, national wrestling, traditional intellectual games, martial arts competitions, traditional archery, national bird hunting, horseback riding and folk games.

Photo credit: worldnomadgames.kz.

The fifth World Nomad Games will be held in Astana on Sept. 8-14. It will feature such games as asyk atu (outdoor game knocking out a sheep joint bones), ordo (Kyrgyz outdoor game), arkan tartys (tug-of-war), baige (horse race), kokpar (goat pulling), audaryspak (horseback wrestling), and tenge ilu (picking up coins on a horse).

There will also be Kazakh kuresi (Kazakh wrestling), ashyrtmaly aba gyureshi (belt wrestling), kurash (wrestling), alysh (Kyrgyz belt wrestling), ssireum (South Korean wrestling), mas-wrestling (stick tug-of-war), powerful nomad (strongman competition), togyzkumalak (nine pebbels board game), mangala (Turkish board game), oware (West African board game), sadak atu (traditional archery), zhamby atu (horseback archery), and kusbegilik (eagle training).

Additionally, there are plans to host 10 demonstration sports competitions. Overall, 110 sets of medals will be awarded at the games.

The opening of ethnoauyl (ethno-village) is scheduled the day before the opening ceremony of the games.


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