Steve travels #38: World Nomad Games day 3
Today we begin with the most confronting, most iconic, and most popular of the nomad games: Kokpar. Think polo, but replace the ball with headless goat carcass, and ditch the mallets. It has a close cousin, Kok Boru, also played at these games, and I have completely failed to find what, if any, differences exist between the two.
The Qazanat Hippodrome is across the road from the Ethno-Aul, and by 10am, the stands are pretty full. But there’s an unexplained delay, and the game doesn’t kick off till 11am.
Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan would be the dream match-up. Horses are central to Kyrgyzstan culture across almost the whole country and they really love this sport. But alas, we have Kazakhstan vs Russia.
The riders take to the field. But between the stands and the field are a wide pedestrian walkway, a narrow pedestrian walkway, a sandy horse racing track, and a grassy horse racing track. So everything is happening quite a long way away. And someone chose to place the medical tents in the way, further obscuring the view.
The essence of Kok Par is grabbing the 27kg goat carcass (played with a rubber fake on this occasion) by reaching very low to the ground, hauling it up to the saddle, and racing off to the goal area to dump it on the ground. Meanwhile opponents go full-contact to stop you. There are tussles, changes of possession, all kinds of exciting stuff.
Or, there would be, if the teams were more evenly matched. What actually happens is a Kazakhstan rider grabs the goat, they race off to the goal and score a point. Then they come back and do it again. And again. And again.
There is a brief moment of excitement when the goat remains on the ground for a minute while the riders jostle around, before the pattern resumes. At half time we’re at 8-0. I’m pretty bored. Russia manages a couple of late goals, but it ends 17-2.
I’m so bored I don’t even check if there are more matches in my ticket session. Instead I stroll off in the direction of 3 huge rockets in the distance, the site of an open air space museum. Both Google Maps and OpenStreetMap don’t think there is a road connecting through to it, but my eyes beg to differ and I’m feeling argumentative.
My eyes were right and in minutes I’ve arrived. On the one hand, it’s very exciting to see apparently full-size replicas of three of the Russian space program’s most famous rockets: the incredibly reliable workhorse Soyuz, the heavy booster Proton, and the mid sized Zenit. And also the Buran, the Soviet Union’s shameless Space Shuttle knock-off, an incredibly expensive endeavour which managed a single successful launch.
On the other, it’s all a bit hollow (literally) and underwhelming. The website promises that each craft has an informative panel full of details, but the six years since the open air museum was built have not been kind. I read somewhere that these are not even quite full size mock-ups. So there’s none of the “wow” factor I got visiting the Smithsonian Institute’s Air and Space Museum in Washington DC years ago. Annoyingly, there’s a couple of Kazakhstan space industry buildings right next door but they are very much not open for visits by earnest Australian tourists, and also please no photos, thank you.
I have a bit of time before “Powerful Nomad” begins, so I grab a ticket to Horse Archery. It is everything that Kokpar wasn’t: Exciting! Close up! Fun!
It’s a different format from what I glimpsed the previous day. There are three targets, each a shiny disk hanging on a cord so it can spin freely in the wind. Each rider has to ride about 100 metres in about 13 seconds, firing as many arrows as they want - usually one at each target. The targets are sit progressively further back, and worth more points: 5, 10, then 15. You get bonus points for riding faster, and lose points for going slower. Over 20 seconds is worth nothing. The spinning target means the rider often needs to wait an extra second or two for the optimum time.
It’s really gripping. Everyone cheers any target hit, and 15 pointers always get a huge cheer. There’s a huge range in skill levels, including a Canadian who is clearly an archer who only just picked up horse riding and canters gingerly along. But the Kazakhs are in a league of their own, blasting past at a flat-out gallop while their upper body remains absolutely stable. Once, a Kazakh rider completes the course in 8.5 seconds, hitting two targets.
It’s exciting in ways that conventional archery will never match. The skill required to even draw and fire three arrows in that time is phenomenal. A rider from Malaysia has a strategy of skipping the middle target, which actually pays dividends for her.
At the end, a special event brings together winners of the various formats. Now they take turns to hit a single tiny target hanging from a thread 12 metres off the ground. Break the thread, win $2000. Fittingly, a Kazakh rider manages on his third go. It’s fun watching all the missed arrows sail miles into the field behind.
The atmosphere in the village is still fun. I get interviewed by a couple of volunteers collecting soundbites. One wants a single word for Kazakhstan, so I give her “unexpected”. Another wants to know what facts I know about Kazakhstan. I’m tempted to launch into the $120 million per year it charges Russia for the Baikonur spaceport, but play it safe with geographic area and natural resources instead.
Powerful Nomad is a sort of strongman competition, whose exact format I suspect changes on the whims of the organisers. The first leg counts how many times you lift a 100kg fake sheep onto your shoulder in a minute.
The second, how far you can drag a 500kg horse cart through deep sand, also in a minute. The 2.08m Iranian competitor is a beast, and moves it more than twenty metres. “Jerry from Nigeria” looks like a last-minute call-up and is unable to shift it. The announcer’s English always comes across as condescending: “Jerry’s really trying! The cart is very heavy!”
But then things take a turn. At the end of the round, spectators wander into the field to have a look at some of the props. A random Belgian who looks like he works in IT has a crack at the cart and out-performs Jerry.
Then another strongman shows up and lies down in the field, while people place some planks over him. Someone drives a Jeep over the top of him. The planks break, but he’s ok. Now he’s sticking his arm on the ground while the Jeep drives over that.
He’s not done. He grabs a cordless drill and shoves it up his nose, powering it up, to prove - I have no idea. He grabs a frying pan and rolls it up. He puts a hot water bottle under a log, attaches a pipe, and inflates it till the hot water bottle pops. It’s his whole litany of party tricks.
Suddenly there’s a gigantic sabre and the challenge is to hold it vertically with one hand, arm straight. Most randoms from the audience can’t even manage with two hands. Slowly various strongmen emerge from the crowd to show off their prowess. The winner has to be the Russian who sings a song while balancing the sword perfectly still.
So, um, is the competition going to continue? It doesn’t look like it. The sun’s going down and there’s no floodlights. I start a modest spin-off competition by confirming that lifting the 100kg sack up to my shoulder is incredibly difficult.
Then people start hurling large metal-tipped wooden poles like javelins, and it’s time to leave.
Tomorrow morning is the falconry contest. I’m so curious to see how it works.