Well finally the day of the Nadaam games had arrived.  Since I first heard stories of the existence of these games (Thanks Liz) I thought “This I have to see”.  For a few months prior to starting my trip the Nadaam games had been my line in the sand around which I picked a departure date.  This was the only date/location I had planned for my whole trip so it was with no small amount of anticipation that I woke up and set out for the games.

 A little background for those who don’t follow this annual competition religiously.  Nadaam is the annual National Games of Mongolia, and loosely translated it means “The Three Manly Sports”.   For those of you who might have your own opinion about which three sports are the “Manly” ones I’ll go ahead and tell you. In Mongolia these manly sports are officially wrestling, archery, and horse racing. The necessity of these skills in nomadic life, and therefore the tradition of these three sports, goes back centuries in Mongolian history.  The modern recognition of this tradition is various small Nadaam games throughout the countryside with the main national games held in the capital Ulanbataar (UB) July 11 & 12^th.  The winners in UB’s Nadaam games are recognized as the national champions.  In the last 2 years a third sport/game has been included, anklebone flicking (More on this later).  I should also note, before too many politically correct western feathers get ruffled, that women participate in the archery competition and children (6-10yrs old) are actually the jockeys in the horse racing.

    OK so early that morning I’m off to get myself situated in front of the Mongolian Parliament building to see the opening ceremonies’ procession begin. The opening ceremonies begin when the Mongolian cavalry/color guard rides up on horses to the parliament building and retrieves the 9 white yak tails from their normal place of display in the parliament. Making sure to grab the White yak tails is very important, because should the color guard mistakenly grab the 9 Black yak tails and march out of parliament this symbolizes a declaration of war in Mongolia.  Thankfully the cavalry emerged with the white yak tails, the national band began to play and a slow procession through the capital from parliament to the stadium began.  The cavalry was amazing to see, in full traditional garb, police clearing the traffic in front and these beautiful Mongolian horses marching with a discipline and purpose that was felt by the crowd.

     I followed the procession all the way from downtown to the stadium which was about 4km.  Once at the stadium I could see that this was going to be quite a festival, there were tents in the parking lot from people who had come from the countryside to see the games, buses filled the parking area, and vendors had set up around the entire stadium.  It was about an hour before the actual opening ceremonies commenced so I walked around taking some photos, marveling at the variety of different traditional outfits everyone was wearing. 

As it came time to begin the ceremonies I made my way to my seat.  I was about to quickly learn there is no such thing as a designated seat, personal space, or polite patience in a Mongolian crowd.  Once in the area where my seat was supposed to be I just did my best to make a space for myself and my camera bag among the crowd pushing and jostling to pack thousands of people into hundreds of seats on tiny wooden benches. 

     The upside was that the ceremonies were very interesting with shaman dancers, contortionists, the president of Mongolia addressing the crowd, hundreds of dancers in traditional Mongolian and Russian outfits.  The whole thing lasted about an hour and a half and concluded with the cavalry placing the 9 yak tales into the proper position at the center of the stadium.

     Next began the wrestling competitions which were open to anyone who had the proper Mongolian wrestling costume and had registered the previous day.  The rules of Mongolian wresting are very simple; the first person’s elbow or knee that touches the ground loses.  There doesn’t seem to be much strategy beyond keeping your balance, wearing the other guy down, and going for the legs.  There is no time limits on the matches and no boundaries to the wrestling area so matches can go on for quite some time and wander about the field quite a bit.  After watching several matches (there are usually 5-10 matches going at once) I quickly realized that the big guy usually wins.  There were quite some amusing miss matches between wrestlers that looked to be no more than 5 feet tall and 120 pounds and their opponent at 6’ 5” and 300 pounds.  The other thing I noticed was that it seems to be a right of passage for most Mongolian military personnel to enter the competition (regardless of their size or wrestling skill).  A judge stands along side and watches each match to break up any deadlocks and to determine the winner.  The winner is quickly crowned with a traditional Mongolian Khongor hat and must run to the 9 yak tails to complete the ceremonial victory dance.  To complete the dance the victor must circle the yak tails clockwise and then do his best eagle dance with his arms spread wide. 

     After an hour of watching wrestling, and not much luck photographing it, I moved on to find the archery competition.  I arrived as the women were beginning their 1^st round of the competition.  I was surprised to find them shooting at targets on the ground, but then again what the hell do I know about traditional Mongolian archery.  Equally surprising was the fact that the judges stood at the other end of the field right behind the targets, seemed like the potential to get struck by an arrow was rather high, but I guess its all part of being manly.

     The 3^rd Nadaam sport, horse racing, was held outside the city about 40km and I would have to wait to see that tomorrow.

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     As a fan of games, drinking, games that involve drinking, and drinking that leads to games, this particular competition held a special interest for me. One of the many missions of my trip now became clear.  Upon my return I would become the west coast promoter of ankle bone flicking in the states.  I would need to learn as much of the rules and intricacies of this game as possible.  I inched my way closer and closer to the players and watched every move.  I kept moving closer until at one point I was offered one of the team’s stools to sit on as if I was waiting my turn to play.  I can only imagine how comical it must have appeared to see a row of short Mongolian men all seated in their traditional garb with hats and at the end this row a tall blonde guy’s head sticking up, completely out of place.  I stayed until the end, taking notes, pictures and even attempting conversations on a few occasions. Not knowing/understanding any Mongolian kept the conversations brief and full of exaggerated gestures.  The wild gestures were a vain attempt to illustrate my words, which ultimately meant nothing to these guys.

     The games ended for the day and I made the decision to walk back to town instead of trying to figure out the complexities of all the buses and their destinations.

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