Like ‘rugby on horses’ with a decapitated goat: Inside first U.S. team at World Nomad Games

This is not your typical Olympic game:

"Creed Garnick first discovered the exotic sport four years ago in Kyrgyzstan while teaching American rodeo games in the Central Asian country.

Played with a freshly slaughtered, decapitated goat, the object of kok-boru is to drag and lift the roughly 70-pound carcass into a “taikazan,” a circular goal that looks like a shallow well, more times than your opponent. Competitors do this atop a horse while getting wrestled and rammed by their opponents and their horses.

“It’s like rugby on horses,” Garnick, a former competitive bull rider, said of the game (pronounced coke-bah-RU).

Never did he imagine that he would captain the first United States team to compete in Kyrgyzstan at the World Nomad Games, a burgeoning international display of ethnic sports popular in Central Asia, such as salburun, which combines falconry and mounted archery, and er ernish, a game somewhat like wrestling on horseback. Even though he was raised riding horses in Wyoming, Garnick is a 28-year-old Juilliard graduate who now makes his living as an actor. He spends time on New York City stages as well as the ranch these days, and he certainly isn’t typically playing sports involving decapitated goats."