Western athletes try their hand at Kyrgyzstan’s Nomad Games

ISSYK-KUL REGION, Kyrgyzstan Sept 10 : Clutching a bow and arrow and riding helmet in a remote gorge in northern Kyrgyzstan, London-based executive coach Becca Sweetman is a long way from home.

“About eight years ago a friend asked if I wanted to have a go at horseback archery and I just got hooked on this amazing sport,” she said.

“So, I’ve been competing for the last eight years for the Great Britain team.”

Sweetman is one of many Western athletes to make the trek out to Central Asia for the Nomad Games, a biannual tournament of traditional nomad sports, mostly originating from Central Asia. Aside from horse archery, they include various styles of wrestling, falconry, and traditional board games.

Since the inaugural edition in 2014, the Nomad Games have gone from strength to strength. 

This year they returned home to Kyrgyzstan, the mountainous Central Asian country of seven million where they were first held, and where traditional sports retain a strong popular following. More than 3,000 athletes from more than 100 countries took part, organisers said.

An opening ceremony in the Kyrgyz capital, Bishkek, was attended by leaders including Russian President Vladimir Putin, Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, and India’s Narendra Modi, in town for a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation.

Sam Pollard, a London-based consultant, came to Kyrgyzstan as part of the British tug of war team. He said he’d become interested in the Nomad Games after seeing videos of Kok Boru, a nomadic sport similar to polo, but which is played with a sheep carcass in place of a ball.

“That looks awesome,” he told himself. The timing of the games aligned perfectly with when he wanted to visit Central Asia, plus he and his friends “had a bit of background in tug of war,” he said.

Although many athletes have come from countries without a history of nomadism, others come from countries like Mongolia and the Central Asian republics, where nomadic sports retain a major following.

“These games have the nomadic spirit,” said Mumina Daminova, a horseback archer from Uzbekistan, who competed in flowing white traditional robes.

“It’s like Olympic games but for ethnosport,” she said.