Page 52 - bne_August 2020_20200810

52 I Eurasia bne August 2020
Mongolia's Naadam festival starts this weekend featuring the "three manly games" of archery, wrestling and horse riding
Mongolia to go ahead with Naadam festival, but with no tourists
Milena Mendes in Ulaanbaatar
The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic has played hell
with the international event calendar everywhere this year. Football tournaments have been nixed. The Munich beer festival called off. And
the 32nd Summer Olympics, initially scheduled to take place in Tokyo between July and August of this
year, has been cancelled. After much discussion the International Olympic Committee said sports fans will have
to wait another year to see its streets flooded by tourists coming from all over the world to participate in the biggest sports event in the world.
But not in Mongolia, which has decided to go ahead with its own mini- Olympics: Naadam, Mongolia’s biggest festival, where the population come together every year to compete in the
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Three Manly Games: wrestling, archery and horse riding.
Naadam brings in tourists from all over the world during the three day-long summer games that celebrate the anniversaries of the Foundation of the First Mongolian Sate, the founding
of the Great Mongol Empire, and the Mongolian People’s Revolution of 1921. Despite the current pandemic, the event will neither be postponed, as its date is an official Government calendar holiday, nor cancelled. But there have been some adjustments made for this year’s edition.
Though the biggest events take place in the capital, Ulaanbaatar, including concerts and performances at Sukhbaatar Square, the central square where the Mongolian Parliament
House is located, cultural festivals are celebrated throughout the country. Naadam might be a centuries-old tradition in its different forms and editions, but it is still a huge part of modern Mongolian culture. For the approximate 3mn natives, it is also
a chance to reconnect with families, friends and old acquaintances as Mongolians ride into the capital on this occasion, which is as much about keeping in touch with extended family as a sports event – a nomad’s version of Thanksgiving.
Naadam starts on July 11 with
a months-long planned opening ceremony that involves synchronised performances with hundreds of volunteers telling stories about some events of the Mongolian history, featuring dancers, musicians and