Mongolia celebrates ‘manly’ Olympics
Posted: Tuesday, September 01, 2009 9:40 AM
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By Adrienne Mong, NBC News Producer
ULAN BATOR, Mongolia – You won’t see Michael Phelps at these Olympic Games.
Sometimes billed as the Nomad Olympics, the Naadam festival in Mongolia features competitions in the three "manly" sports – horseracing, archery, and wrestling.
The event dates back 800 years, to the days when the great warrior horseman, Genghis Khan (known as Chinggis Khan in Mongolia), and his men swept down from the grassland steppes to conquer empires in Asia, Russia, the Middle East, and as far as Europe.
It’s believed that Genghis came up with the festival to keep his men in fighting shape when they weren’t conquering new lands. Today, the three-day event marks Mongolia’s independence from China in 1921 and Tsarist Russia. Everyone takes off work to watch – whether in front of their televisions or in person.
A couple of days before the festival earlier this summer, we noticed Mongolia’s bright blue and red national flags springing up on cars all over the country
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| Adrienne Mong / NBC News |
| Wrestlers at the National Stadium on the opening day of the Naadam festival in Ulan Bator. |
Families in Ulan Bator, Mongolia’s capital city, shopped for live goats or sheep from shepherds, who had traveled long distances to reach the edge of the city with their herds.
And at least in Ulan Bator, Mongolia’s capital, the recent festival had a state fair feel to it – lots of food, families, and fun. Smaller-scale, local Naadam festivals also are held all across Mongolia.
The ‘manly’ sports
Despite the event’s community and social elements, sport remains at the heart of Naadam, which in Mongolian means "game."
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| Adrienne Mong / NBC News |
| Archers practice for Naadam in Ulan Bator. |
Wrestling, in particular, is tremendously popular, and why not? Extremely large men dressed in extremely minimal clothing tussle with each other until one falls – a wrestler loses if any part of his body, apart from their hands and feet, touches the ground.
It’s a test of strength, but also strategy and wit. And my favorite part: whoever wins gets to imitate the "flight" styles of a hawk, falcon, or the mythical bird creature, Garuda.
Folklore has it that once, long ago, a woman won the wrestling title, which precipitated the minimalist uniform – an open chest vest and snug shorts.
Today, women are allowed to compete in one sport – archery. The bow and arrow was, of course, the main form of weaponry centuries ago in Mongolia, and the contest was designed to test a warrior’s strength, marksmanship, and patience.
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| Adrienne Mong / NBC News |
| Arrows with rubber tips, but they still hurt if you get hit. |
A woman archer we interviewed emphasized the gender advantage; apparently, women are more patient than men. But men do have to shoot farther with more arrows – they shoot 40 arrows from a distance of about 250 feet while women shoot 20 arrows from about 200 feet.
As a spectator sport, it would seem a little tame, but try standing in the target area. Those arrows travel at high speeds.
For a real adrenaline rush, however, horseracing wins hands down. Unlike in the West, the races at Naadam are tough cross-country events, with horses thundering at full speed for distances up to 19 miles. Distances are run according to the age of the horse. For example, five-year-old horses will run 19 miles, while two-year-old horses compete at half that distance.
What’s more, the jockeys are little boys, some as young as five years old – although due to safety concerns it’s increasingly rare to see riders that young. We found a seven-year-old, nicknamed Jijigee, who was running his first Naadam – a rite of passage of sorts for young boys from the countryside who are all keen on proving themselves at the greatest horserace all year.
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| Adrienne Mong / NBC News |
| A group of young jockeys train in the early morning. |
Better to watch
And then there’s ankle bone shooting, which isn’t one of the official "manly" sports, but it’s definitely played by men.
Described by one contestant as a form of "indoor archery," ankle bone shooting entails flicking a shaped piece of ankle bone – taken from a sheep, goat, or deer – at a target about 17 feet away (at least at the competition we watched; in some competitions it’s as far as 33 feet). Competitors play in teams of seven or eight, with four men at a time trying their luck.
I tried my luck, too, and quickly decided the best part of Naadam was watching, not doing.
Click here to see a slideshow of Mongolia's scenic sights during the Nomad Olympics
Click here to read about Mongolia's 'reindeer' people
Listen to a Podcast of NBC's Adrienne Mong discussing how China is viewed in Mongolia
