Naadam Festival

essentially the Naadam games are the olympic games for Mongols. they were originally started in the 12th century and are still played today all over mongolia but the biggest one is held in Ulaanbaatar the capital of mongolia. the games that are played are archery, horse racing and wrestling.

Rules

in the three day festiveal they play

-wrestling

as the competitions have changed through out history so have the rules and number of competitors but currently they play with 512 wrestlers, compet in single elimination tournament. the wrestlers enter the ring dancing and waring a frontless vest, legend says that once a woman disguised as a man entered the competition the vests prevent this from happening again. the match goes until one player forces the other to the ground. in the later matches the winner obtains tittles such as falcon, elephants, lion

-horse racing

the races vary in langth depending upon how old the horse is the races vary from 15-30km as when gangis khon had his rest stations every 30km in his original postage system. the jockeys are generally kids from the ages 5-13

-archery

participants play in ten men/woman teams that have four arrows each instead of shouting at just one target they have multiple to aim at there aloud to have up to 360 targets but most of the time there is only 30 or forty targets each team has to hit 33 targets

History

the events were first started by Ganges Khan in the 12th century , the name of the festival Naadam comes from the mongle word naadah witch means to play. in 1920 when mongolia was split between china and the russia the games were played in secret as china had outlawed them. the games became a mandatory event on the russian side.

Game Design Elements

Art

the festival brings national pride Mongol empire and many people dress as citizens and solders of that time period.

References

-http://www.gluckman.com/Naadam.html

-http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/topics/Naadam

-http://www.nadammongoliannaadamfestival.com/

-http://www.kiwicollection.com/news_events_detail/ITEM=485/

Links

Bulleted list of links to sites with more information or playable versions

Be sure to describe what the link is

Any links to outside sites should open in a new window