Kurash as dominant sport: 5th World Nomad Games end in Astana

Tatarstan residents have four medals at the Nomad Games

The 5^th World Nomad Games started in Astana a week ago. There were 89 countries of the world delegating 2,500 athletes competing in 21 sports. The competitions were held under the auspices of the World Ethnosport Confederation (WEC) headed by Necmettin Bilal Erdogan. It is not difficult to guess that this is the son of the current President of Turkey Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The 4^th World Nomad Games were held in the Turkish city of Iznik from 29 September to 2 October 2022. Last autumn, Russia participated in these large-scale competitions with a flag and anthem, and now 150 Russians started with all the attributes of statehood, participating in all types of competition programme. The delegation of Tatarstan was also impressive, as usual dominating in two disciplines of the martial arts programme: belt wrestling and alysh wrestling.

In the Kyrgyz wrestling competition, alysh, wrestler of the Russian national team in kurash, world champion in kurash, winner of the BRICS Games Ranis Gilyazetdinov became the winner in the 100+ kg weight category. Silver in the 70 kg category was won by athlete Islam Falyakhov. Two more representatives of the Tatarstan school of kurash became bronze medallists: Ilfat Minnegaliyev — 60 kg, Bulat Musin — 100 kg.

The Russian team included Tatars, world and Russian champions, as well as winners of the BRICS Games held in Kazan Alexey Abramov, Dinar Karimullin, Azat Gabdrashitov and Radik Salakhov. Moreover, they had to pass an additional test of endurance and versatility, since the Nomad Games practise wrestling in several disciplines, including Kazak kureshi and kurash. It will be difficult for non-professionals to understand the difference between closely related styles, such as judo and sambo, Greco-Roman and freestyle wrestling, kickboxing and boxing, but it should be noted that most of our opponents at the World Belt Wrestling Championships are also “multi-taskers”.

In general, 21 types of sports programme of the 5th World Nomad Games have disciplines from both the compulsory and performance programs. The first three starts were held in Kyrgyzstan in 2014, 2016 and 2018, then the coronavirus did not allow competing in 2020 in Azerbaijan, the fourth was Turkey, now Kazakhstan. Each host country strives to bring something of its own to the competition programme where the people of this country have competed since time immemorial.

The Astana programme includes lasso torts, the well-known tug of war, which, by the way, was an Olympic discipline in the period 1900-1920, that is, at five Olympics in a row, plus at chabysh, that is, horse racing. And every true Tatar will see parallels with the traditional Sabantuy in the World Nomad Games. There are also alyptar sayysy (strongmen’s competitions), traditional archery, archery on horseback, mass wrestling. On the one hand, the names of the sports sound exotic, on the other hand, no less exotic were, for example, break dancing and golf, surfing and skateboarding, sport climbing in the Paris Olympic programme. No matter how exotic the names may seem, after passing the half of the competition, athletes from 28 countries, a third of the total number of participants, won medals in them. It turns out that many had “their own” disciplines.

We win in the Ushkempirov Palace remembering Anatoly Bozin

It is curious that Tatarstan wrestlers won victories in the Zhaksalyk Ushkempirov Palace of Martial Arts, which became the main arena of the competition. The palace was named in honour of the lightweight wrestler, the first Kazakhstani Olympic champion who won gold at the 1980 Moscow Games. Kazakhstan also remembers the first ethnic Kazakh, Alzhan Zharmukhamedov who became an Olympic champion as part of the USSR basketball team at the 1972 Olympics, but the honour paid to him in the republic is lower, since Zharmukhamedov spent his career playing in Tashkent, Moscow and the GDR, as part of the GSFG team, the group of Soviet troops in Germany.

The mention of Ushkempirov is another reason to congratulate another wrestler Anatoly Bozin on his 70th birthday. It was Bozin from Kazan who was the leader of the Soviet team in the 48 kg weight category winning silver twice and bronze once at the European Championships in that Olympic cycle. But Bozin's injury in the Olympic year and Ushkempirov's championship happiness led to a situation in which Zhaksalyk competed on the Olympic mat winning gold. Bozin who celebrated his anniversary this year is still in good shape training athletes both in Greco-Roman wrestling where he became famous and in belt wrestling.

The BRICS Games held in Kazan are mainly about sports, since the results of these starts will be decisive in assigning the amounts of sports scholarships for the next year, as earlier, in 2022, these amounts were determined by the Friendship Games and the Spartakiad of the Strongest. Previously, simultaneously receiving bonuses for medals, athletes earned, so to speak, a “salary,” a salary for the next year or two. There are currently no international competitions in many sports, but the regulatory documents remain the same. The World Nomad Games are about something else. For example, the Russian Ministry of Sport is currently forming a regulatory framework for cooperation between the countries of the Caspian Five (Russia, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, Iran).

All roads lead to Astana

For example, the Chess Olympiad started in Budapest this week, and Russian Arkady Dvorkovich is still the president of the international federation. But the Russian team is missing the second Olympiad, following the IOC's order not to allow Russian athletes to participate in team competitions. In individual competitions, please, which is what our chess players are doing, as well as, for example, tennis players, who are allowed everywhere except the men's Davis Cup and the women's Billie Jean King Cup.

Because these federations are not independent, unlike the World Ethnosport Confederation (WEC). It is no coincidence that the Russian Sports Minister Degtyarev took advantage of his trip to Astana to hold a series of meetings with both Bilal Erdogan and his colleagues, heads of ministries from other countries. After recently calling Director of Zilant handball club Konstantin Gorbunov, Realnoe Vremya’s correspondent discovered that he was in Astana. It turned out that the Marketing Director of the International Kurash Federation and the Kurash Federation of Russia Rustem Khasanshin was also in Kazakhstan. The entire sports leadership of Russia headed by Mikhail Degtyarev and a delegation of the International Kurash Federation (President Dzhaudat Minnakhmetov) chaired by Vice President of the Federation, member of the Board of Directors of the World Ethnosport Confederation Ravil Nogumanov gathered in the capital of Kazakhstan. The sports leadership of Tatarstan also went to Astana, including the ideological supporter of the World Nomad Games Khalil Shaykhutdinov who believed in the importance of participating in these competitions since their debut in 2014.

Tatarstan's involvement in the sports process at the start of the World Nomad Games largely contributed to the fact that in 2022, belt kurash was included in the programme of the competition that took place in Turkey, for the first time, and the federation itself was recognised as the best ethnosports organisation in the world. In this competition, kurash was present as a mandatory sport.