Kyrgyzstan Hosts The World Nomad Games

Kyrgyzstan hosted the third edition of the World Nomad Games in 2018 before turning over the week-long traditional sport extravaganza to Turkey in 2020. Launched as a government initiative in 2014, the festival aims to preserve this centuries-long traditional Turkic nomadic culture, as well as those of Central Asia, which had been pushed toward extinction by decades of Soviet collectivization followed by two decades of globalization. Around 2,000 athletes from 77 countries took part in the third edition of the games featuring 37 different types of ethnosports; including horseback archery, dog racing, as well as Kok Boru (also known as Buzkashi in Afghanistan), a horse game traditionally used for military training, where players throw a goat carcass into the goal.