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Goat-tossing on horseback inflames Kyrgyz politics

NIZHNY OROK: 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’s 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?

“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 30 and 40 kilograms (66 and 88 pounds), 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 200-metre (650-foot) 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 organisers of a recent tournament in Nizhny Orok, a village 15 kilometres (nine miles) from the capital Bishkek.

“This game didn’t start yesterday, it started 2,000-3,000 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 United States 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 September 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”. Then there’s the whole goat carcass issue.

“Some foreigners may turn up and say, ‘It’s so cruel! Cutting up a goat to play with - how awful!’” tournament organiser Tabakriyev said, his tone showing minimal sympathy for animal rights activists.

“But we accept life as it is. We look at it as a sacrifice,” he said.

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

“The only thing holding us back right now are the party heads,” he said, explaining he had joined the anti-Bakiyev opposition after being fired from the presidential guard service. “We’re waiting for the word.”

The president had taken note. The Prosecutor General’s office issued a warning to the organisers not to interfere, and a series of government officials bumped up the potholed roads in their Mercedes to consult with opposition leaders at the tournament.

The political implications of horseback goat-tossing also worried the Soviets, who imposed a ban on kok-boru in the 1950s that lasted until Kyrgyzstan declared independence in 1991. “They said it was to preserve the fields, or some such nonsense,” Dyushekeyev said. “The real reason was that when a man sits on a horse, he feels free. And a free man can think all kinds of things.”

In spite of a deeply-rooted equestrian culture in Central Asia, the cost of raising and transporting horses is an obstacle to kok-boru’s resurgence in Kyrgyzstan, which has a per capita gross domestic product of only about 2,000 dollars. A first-rate kok-boru horse, meanwhile, can cost from 10,000 to 15,000 dollars.

“We do what we can to help. We make sure even the last-place teams get enough prize money to cover their trip home,” said Tabyldy Asygaliyev, spokesman for the International Kok-Boru Federation. afp

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