Mongolia🇲🇳5 year old youngsters competing for the prestigious Naadam horse race trophy

For this, I traveled to a small village (Kharkhorin) to watch the preliminaries and later returned to UB (sounds cooler than Ulaanbaatar) to see the finals. The kickoff, even before the opening ceremony, was the horse race. When I asked if women also participate in this event, the answer was an indignant “no, of course not. It’s very dangerous, and women should have babies.”

But even for men, this most important event of Naadam is not for everyone because they are too heavy. The five-year-old horses are propelled forward by frequent whip lashes from equally young jockeys on their backs, some even without a saddle or stirrups. While we still have training wheels at that age in the Netherlands, almost every child here can ride a horse flawlessly, although... some needed help from an adult on horseback to set the horse in the right direction and get it into a full gallop with a few whip lashes (fortunately, the race is a straight line), others had to be slowed down at the finish line, and one horse knew a faster way back home 100 meters before the finish line and turned left. All in all, it was very special to see that the battle for the title at this prestigious annual event was fought by five-year-olds.

How different it was with wrestling: the contenders weighed 150kg+. And how hilariously funny to see that these absolute folk heroes in the land of stoic machismo have to perform a kind of funny bird dance (eagle dance) beforehand and after the match, the loser has to spin around under the arm of the winner and get a pat on the butt, while the winner gets a sip of milk and a handful of popcorn.


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