Sun, Apr 22, 2007 page5

• Feature: Kyrgyzstan's bloody sport the pride of the country

  • AFP
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  The ancient Central Asian sport of kok-boru, in which horsemen wrestle over a headless goat, may not have caught on in the West, but here it is a source of national pride -- and a wildcard in national politics.

  "Why does the United States promote football everywhere? Because through football they spread American values, the American way of life. Here it's the same with kok-boru," said Kemir Dyushekeyev, assistant director of Kyrgyzstan's National Kok-Boru Federation.

  Exactly what are the values spread by a sport where the ball is a gutted goat carcass with its head removed and legs cut off at the knees?

  

  This picture taken on Dec. 17, 2005, shows Kyrgyz riders galloping prior to a kok-boru game in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Kok boru, which means ''goat grabbing,'' is the national sport in which horsemen compete to pick up the carcass of a decapitated calf or goat.

  PHOTO: AFP

  "Strength, bravery, competition and camaraderie. There can be no kok-boru without camaraderie," Dyushekeyev said.

  Or without strength. At the start of the game, eight players on horseback race to get their hands on a goat carcass that weighs between 30kg and 40kg, which they usually haul up by one of its truncated limbs.

  They whip and punch each other for control of the goat, sometimes passing it to teammates, until one player breaks away and gallops across a 200m field to toss it into a stone ring.

  "It's in our blood to play, it's in our genes," said Bakyt Tabakriyev, one of the organizers of a recent tournament in Nizhny Orok, a village 15km from the capital Bishkek.

  "This game didn't start yesterday, it started 2,000 [to] 3,000 years ago," he said.

  And it's not as singular as it might sound. Kok-boru is played under various names throughout Central Asia.

  Regional tournaments bring in national teams from Afghanistan, China, Kazakhstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.

  It almost made the jump to the US in 2001 after a group of US rodeo riders travelled to Kyrgyzstan to display their skills.

  Kyrgyz horsemen were set to reciprocate with a kok-boru exhibition, but were denied US visas after the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks, Dyushekeyev said.

  "Americans would have loved it," he said. "It's a harsh sport, but so is football."

  One difference is protective gear -- or the lack of it. Most kok-boru players are shielded from their competitors' whips and fists -- not to mention horses' hooves when they fall from the saddle -- only by World War II-era Soviet tank helmets.

  Play is supposed to stop if a fallen player is in danger of being trampled, but "there are serious injuries all the time."

  It was hard to find any trace of religiosity as the players spat curses in Russian and thrashed everything within whip's length amid a huge cloud of dust.

  The game's political element, however, was far clearer.

  The week-long Nizhny Orok tournament was sponsored by the Ata Meken opposition political party, and was timed to match opposition rallies in nearby Bishkek that were aimed at bringing down Kyrgyz President Kurmanbek Bakiyev.

  If police tried to break up the rally, hundreds of kok-boru players from Nizhny Orok and other villages would gallop into Bishkek to take them on, said Tabakriyev, also a member of Atam Bek.
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