Nine cowboys from the United States (US) are set to
showcase their strength, agility, and of course, horse riding skills at the
fifth World Nomad Games, where they will compete in kokpar. The athletes had
little time for a full-pledged preparation, so they learned from YouTube
tutorials. However, as cowboy rodeo shares similarities with kokpar and kok
boru, the cowboys are confident in their ability to take on the challenge and
show a decent result. They will have to saddle Kazakh horses and adapt to the
game’s peculiarities with the support of friends.
«This is my third World Nomad Games I’ll be an athlete
in. The game of kokpar becomes part of you, you know, it gets inside of you.
And for years, it was all I could think about. To get to come back again, to
participate in the World Nomad Games and to play kokpar is something I think
about. To win a Nomad Games medal would be one of the greatest things,» said US kokpar
team captain Scott Zimmerman.
«I’m always on horseback doing my own events, so that
keeps me in shape that way. We can’t play it over there, but we do a lot of our
training the same way that these guys do. We just watch everybody on YouTube
and see how they train, and we just try to emulate that because that’s all we
can do. We have to do ten times more because we’re still learning the game,» added another
US kokpar team captain Ladd Howell.
