Category: Events

Naadam is a Mongolian holiday that takes place between the 11th and 13th of July annually and is celebrated throughout the entire country with great fanfare.“Naadam” in Mongolian means “games,” which makes sense since the holiday is primarily centered on three Mongolian pastimes: wrestling, horse racing, and archery. Naadam is sometimes called “Eriin Gurvan Naadam,” meaning “the Three Games of Men.” In recent times, however, women have also participated in horse racing and archery, though not yet in wrestling.Naadam has its origins in the distant past when Mongolia was ruled by warlords and emperors like Genghis Khan and his ancestors. Their armies’ hunting tournaments and parades, nomadic wedding celebrations, and sporting competitions all fed into what later officially became Naadam. The holiday took on a more patriotic aura when it was chosen to celebrate the 1921 revolution that freed Mongolia from Chinese control. While Naadam has a Buddhist and Shamanist religious element to it, it has become more secularly celebrated since the 1930s, when Communist influences from the Soviet Union prevailed. The three sports of Naadam are looked at below in more detail: • Mongolian Wrestling About 500 to 1,000 wrestlers will compete during Naadam, and there are some peculiarities to how Mongolians wrestle. There are nine to 10 rounds, but they are not timed. Instead, the loser of each round is he who first touches the ground with any body part other than his hands or feet. Wrestlers dress in traditional vests and shorts, and songs of encouragement are sung to each wrestler. Those in the winners brackets are successively labeled “elephants,” “lions,” and “giants.” • Horse Racing Mongolians do not race during Naadam in “short” mile or two sprints like in the West. Instead, they go on cross-country races of nine to 18 miles. There may be up