The Ethnic Minority University in Beijing hosted this year’s Naadam for Mongolians living in Beijing. A couple hundred people turned out despite the sporadic downpours. Among the many activities and competitions was what I had turned up to watch: Bökh.

And i wasn’t disappointed at all. It was an stellar line-up with ex and current Olympians mixing it up on the grass.

As you know there is no weight classes and we saw some David and Goliath fights. I was thinking that instead of weight classes there should have been two categories: Professional and Amateur, but that is not the Mongolian way. Everyone gets in and has a go. It is all about courage after all.

Courage or getting in there and having a go was not on my list of things to do today, but that didn’t stop my mate Shuanghai trying his best to enrol me. I managed to keep my clothes on and take some photos instead of eating grass at the feet of these awesome athletes. But looking at the photos now I kind of regret it. It was an awesome atmosphere.

The event was won by Mongolian Wrestler turned Olympic Greco-Roman competitor Sai-Yin-Ji-Ya who is a true warrior. He walked through the competition calmly winning all but his last match with ease… and he won the last match without breaking a sweat. We swapped numbers so I hope to learn a trick or two from him and share them with you here.

In the meantime, here are some photos…there are a lot!

Enjoy!

Michael

Art of War’s Zhang Tiequan helping a current Freestyle national team member warm up

The result of awesome timing. A violent downward yank at just the right time sent this chump face first into the pitch. We all felt the earth move too so it had to hurt.

Semi Final

The Final

My favorite photo of the day: Saiyin Jiya supremely cool in the finals just as he had been all morning.

Jiya’s Genghis Khan tattoo.

Jiya won again, and reasonably easily…

First prize was a bike…

But i think they preferred the female attention…

Buddies win or lose.

Hope you guys enjoyed that.

This entry was posted on Saturday, May 17th, 2008 at 6:12 pm and is filed under news. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.