The wildest sport you’ve never heard of has some unlikely stars: American cowboys

Cholpon-Ata, Kyrgyzstan (CNN) — It’s 4 p.m. on day two of the World Nomad Games, and eight horses are converging on a small patch of dirt. The riders elbow, kick and flail while USA team captain Ladd Howell leans off his saddle towards the ground, clenching a whip in his teeth as he grabs for the 70-pound headless goat carcass below. Goat in hand, Howell gallops off towards the goal, kicking up an oppressive cloud of dust while the crowd roars in approval.

“The legendary USA captain Ladd Howell takes the lead,” booms the Kyrgyz announcer. “Ladd! Ladd!”

But just before Howell reaches his destination, a Kyrgyz player collides directly with his horse, knocking him off his path and snatching the goat away. Horses swarm, the flat blue of Issyk-Kul Lake behind them.

This is Kok-Boru, the national sport of Kyrgyzstan beloved across Central Asia for its unrelenting intensity and spectacular display of horsemanship. Few outside of the region have heard of Kok-Boru, but there is a small group of self-described Christian cowboys from the US who can’t get enough.

A group of nine ranchers and rodeo men, most from Utah, have made the 6,600-mile journey to Kyrgyzstan’s largest resort town, Cholpon-ata. Taking two weeks away from their families and ranches and together spending nearly $100,000 to cover travel, gear and stipends, the men are competing in Kok-Boru’s most elite level: the World Nomad Games.

The Americans have shown up for the Games since 2014, though despite 12 years and five tournaments, they have yet to win a match.

They keep coming back anyway.

Stuffed goat carcass

Kok-Boru is somewhat akin to polo, but instead of knocking around a ball, the athletes try to pick up a stuffed goat carcass from the ground and throw it into a goal, called a taikazan.

This game has been a staple across Central Asia for millennia. Originally played with a dead wolf — slain after feeding on local cattle — the epic equestrian sport has evolved with the people of the region.

“It’s one of the most important elements of our culture, especially the traditional part of our culture, because our ancestors have played this game for many centuries,” said Kyrgyz Nomad Games volunteer Jantai Saparbekov. “It symbolizes our traditions being passed from generation to generation.”

UNESCO has recognized the sport on its Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, describing it as a fusion of Kyrgyz culture, history, and identity. In practice, it is dusty, immensely physical (for horses and men alike), and, quite frankly, unforgiving for foreigners who did not grow up playing the sport. Several Kyrgyz players make it their full-time job, competing professionally in national leagues.

The game has started to expand its reach. Notably, Netflix’s popular “Home Game” series, released in 2020, featured an episode on Kok-Boru, introducing many international audiences to the sport for the first time.

The Olympics, these Games are not.

These Games are six days of cultural, athletic and intellectual competitions rooted in Central Asian nomadic heritage — a heritage that goes back 4,000 years according to Kyrgyz political scientist Arzuu Sheranova. The lifestyle lives on; in a country where only about 35% of citizens reside in cities, many still live somewhat migratory existences.

A sporting time capsule

The week honors a past that is still very much present, and the appeal has spread far beyond Central Asia: around 3,000 athletes from 112 countries turned up.

At any given moment, an eight-on-eight tug-of-war game could be happening between India and Pakistan, a Russian man could be struggling to hoist an 1,300-pound stuffed camel down a track, and an Australian woman could be shooting a bow and arrow from horseback.

“These are sports that they’ve been doing and have remained unchanged for thousands of years. They still do it out of pride of their culture,” said USA Kok-Boru player Nick Willert.

The informality runs deeper than the events. Athletes underwent no performance drug testing at the Games, and the World Anti-Doping Agency confirmed the World Nomad Games are not a signatory to the World Anti-Doping Code.

The main venue, the Kyrchyn Gorge, is located about an hour and a half from downtown Cholpon-Ata and feels like entering the deep Kyrgyz mountains.

A vast open field tucked between snow-capped peaks, the gorge serves as home to several sports, a mud-built castle turned into a local food bazaar, and fields of yurts. Participating countries got to host their own expositions; the American yurt featured a cutout of George Washington, US history trivia and cornhole.

The Games are as much — if not more — about culture and costume as they are about sport. On top of over 600 cultural events throughout the week, teams were instructed to don “traditional wear” for the Opening Ceremony, meaning Iranians dressed as Persian Immortals, Mongolians as Mongol warriors, and Americans as … cowboys.

“It feels like a Central Asian Renaissance Fair,” said Connor Ryan, a fan from Boston.

While it may be tempting to dismiss them as just good fun, the Nomad Games have played a pivotal role in Kyrgyzstan’s effort to reclaim and revive its history, which was long buried under several hundred years of Chinese and Soviet control.

“The event itself has contributed to nation-building through a revival of the nomadic values and traditions. It is very explicit in the Kyrgyz rise of ethno-fashion, or dressing in traditional garb in everyday life, which has mushroomed following the first Games in 2014,” explained Sheranova.

There is also an undeniable element of soft power strategy at play. The Games overlapped with high-profile diplomatic summits in the region, drawing Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian to attend the opening ceremony. US Special Envoy for South and Central Asia Ambassador Sergio Gor also attended.

With an upcoming election, Kyrgyz President Sadyr Japarov is sending a clear message to his citizens and the world: Kyrgyzstan has global presence.

The American cowboys

A record 52 American athletes showed up to compete this year, but the scene stealers are the men of USA Kok-Boru. They range in age from 25 to 50, with one of the players also a grandfather.

“We’re just some Midwest guys,” said Howell. “Our real purpose in being here is that when the Games are over, people will know the culture in the US is amazing and authentic. After they meet us here with our cowboy hats, we want them to remember, ‘Hey, the cowboys are good guys.’”

Howell, a cattle rancher and religious Mormon, speaks fluent Russian thanks to a church mission in his late teens that placed him in St. Petersburg. His language skills propel him into the role of team translator and ambassador (Russian is one of Kyrgyzstan’s two national languages).

Howell returned to the US in 2013 and subsequently heard about Kok-Boru through friends in the Utah rodeo circuit. Six of the players are fellow Mormons, recruited by Howell over the years.

“We stand for our country, for our families, for cowboy culture, and definitely for our religion,” said Howell. “We believe strongly in Jesus, so I know bringing these guys over here, there’s no worries about anyone doing anything wrong. Everyone is seriously great ambassadors of America, the church, families, everything.”

On top of being connected by religion, everyone on the team has spent their life on ranches or working with horses.

“These guys are a different breed,” said USA Kok-Boru physiotherapist Hayden Hilke. “They’ve all been riding horses their whole lives. If you’ve been riding a horse your whole life — you may be in professional rodeo, you may have been a cattle farmer for generations — what is the next step? ‘What can I compete in at a level to just show that I’m a really good horseman?’ This is it.”

A dangerous sport

Despite a deep passion for horses and a commitment to competing at the highest level, the team is not logistically set up for success at the Games.

The nine players only got one practice together in the US, mainly because American horses are not trained to handle the physicality of Kok-Boru. They are also the only self-funded Kok-Boru team at the Games, with the other countries involved — Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Russia, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan — receiving government support. All support the US team received came from Kyrgyzstan’s International Kok-Boru Federation.

“We’re at a disadvantage every time,” said Willert. “We’re total underdogs, but that’s kind of the point of sports. For us to keep coming back and getting better — we get that respect, even if we’re not winning.”

Willert, 50, is a former Marine and professional MMA fighter who competes in both Kok-Boru and Er Enish, or horseback wrestling, at the Games, but he had to drop out of the Kok-Boru tournament early after a horseback-wrestling-match-gone-wrong: trampled by his own horse, Willert suffered three broken ribs.

Major injuries in Kok-Boru, though relatively uncommon, are not unheard of. During the 2016 and 2018 editions, the Americans were coached by Mirlan Srazhdinov, a legendary Kyrgyz player. Srazhdinov trained the team until he died while playing Kok-Boru in 2025, fatally struck in the head by a horse mid-match.

“It was horrible,” said Willert. “This is, in my opinion, way gnarlier than any Olympic sport. It’s hard to find guys who are tough enough to do either of these two sports.”

The Kyrgyz connection

Despite the physical and cultural distance between the American and Kyrgyz players, the teams have formed a kinship dating back to the 2014 Games, thanks in large part to their shared love of horses.

The horse is the ultimate national symbol of freedom and opportunity in Kyrgyzstan, a deeply revered animal that serves as a cornerstone of Kyrgyz culture.

“A horse is freedom. A horse is the road. A horse is the wings of the nomad,” said Urmat Asanbaev, director of the Kyrgyz State Agency for Physical Culture and Sports, before the start of the Kok-Boru tournament. “Equestrian games in Kyrgyzstan were never merely a form of entertainment. They prepared a young man for life.”

The American cowboys were raised to feel similarly. “It’s cowboy culture, something that’s been passed down from generations for them but that is sort of dying in the American West,” said Hilke, the physio, who also works with the US Olympic free ski team. “Yes, they’d love to win, but it’s more about having this spirit between man and animal and just the spirit of that generation. Rodeo is harder and harder to sustain. This helps them showcase the spirit of that culture.”

Each Games, Kyrgyzstan lends horses, stables and trainers to the US team, even helping them to better understand the rules of the game and tactics to improve.

And the Kyrgyz crowds adore them. Everywhere Team USA goes, they are treated like an international boy band, mobbed by fans, journalists and other teams trying to grab a picture.

“We really appreciate US and the West taking part in this,” said local volunteer Nurbol Salybekov. “The US is very impactful for every country, and, if we popularize Kok-Boru in the US, the whole world will know about our game and our culture.”

Outside of athletics, Kyrgyzstan’s reputation as a travel destination has skyrocketed: President Japarov stated that the annual number of tourists is now at 13 million, up from under 3 million before 2021.

Fans from all corners of the world crowded into the stadium to watch the Kyrgyzstan versus Kazakhstan final match, flags from all nations filling the stands. “The atmosphere is better than any football match I’ve ever been to,” commented British fan Joe Simmons.

Kyrgyzstan went on to win the tournament, taking home just under $60,000 in prize money, while the US team lost all three of their matches. Despite the poor record, the Americans scored a total of 19 salyms, or goals, with Howell serving as the entire tournament’s top scorer with 15 points.

Most events in Cholpon-Ata were free, and many attendees — fans and participants alike — were there by chance.

“We learned about the Games by accident,” said Joey O’Connell, an Irish competitor in traditional board games. “We were planning a trek in Kyrgyzstan, and we happened to see that the dates were the same. We started researching what the hell they were, and it turns out we could participate.”

The games are held every two years, and those attending in the future just might see the famed American team make another appearance.

“The cowboy hats, that holds heavy still to this day, and we still believe in a good handshake,” said Howell. “Everyone here respects that, and we just keep coming back for more.”

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