The Paris Olympics is not the only major sporting event taking place this summer.
In a setting far removed from the Champs-Elysées, there is another big sporting event - but it’s one in which the only competitors are nomads.
The fifth World Nomad Games, which will take place on the steppes of Kazakhstan from 8 - 13 September, will bring together some 2,500 athletes from a hundred different countries.
This biennial event celebrates the traditional sport and cultural heritage of the world’s estimated 40 million nomadic people.
Most of these sports are wildly different and certainly aren’t the sort of sports that you will see played out in the Olympic stadiums of Paris this summer. Such as kusbegilik, which is hunting with birds of prey. This event is broken down into three different categories: burkit (hunting with a golden eagle), karshyga (hunting with a hawk) and itelgi (hunting with a falcon).
There are many events that require horses (such as horseback wrestling and horseback archery), but other more familiar events like strongman competitions and tug of war will be recognisable to non-nomads.
The World Nomad Games is more than just about traditional sports, though. Nomadic culture, an often overlooked part of a nation’s cultural identity, rightfully gets a prime billing at the Games. Crafts, music, dance, dress, and food of many of the participating nomadic groups will also come under the spotlight.
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