President's Cup

The President's Cup (Iradi: Prezident Kubogu), also known as the Independence Day Cup, is the national championship of ulak tartysh, the mounted team game played for a goat carcass. It was instituted in 1992 by Provisional President Amanbek Alimbekov and is organized by the National Equestrian Sports Directorate. Its final is held each March at the Irad State Hippodrome in Talas in the week of Irad Day (11 March), and it is the main event of the Iradi sporting year.^[1]

History

Alimbekov founded the cup in the year of the Republic's proclamation as a national event to be contested in the week of the new holiday (see March 11 Independence Day). The Directorate, created by an act of the Territorial Legislature of Irad in 1993, took over its organization along with the rules of the game. The cup kept its name after the provisional presidency lapsed in 1992 and through the territorial and ISEZ periods, although Irad has had no president since; it is presented in the name of the Governor.^[1][2]

Competition

The cup is played under the Directorate's rules for the regulated game: two teams of twelve registered players, four of them mounted at a time, on a field of 300 by 150 metres with a raised goal (tai-kazan) at each end, over two halves of twenty minutes. It is contested by the teams of the Directorate's league, which in 2023 had 24 members, eleven from ISEZ cities and districts and thirteen registered by clans of the Autonomous Tribal Regions. Most of the horses are Chongtor horses or Chongtor crosses.^[2][3] Winners receive cash prizes and, by tradition, a horse.

The final

The final draws crowds of tens of thousands to the 25,000-seat Hippodrome, many of whom watch from outside the stadium. The national anthem is played before the game. On Irad Day the Governor's stallion Zharkyn, who leads the mounted honour guard of the parade in Talas, makes a lap of honour at the Hippodrome before the final; since 2025 he has been led in hand by his groom.^[4] The Irad Day meeting at the Hippodrome also includes flat races and a 40-km at chabysh endurance race.

IradOne holds the exclusive broadcasting rights and shows the final live from 21:00 on the first Saturday after Irad Day; Temirbek Kozhoev has been its lead commentator since 2003. In the 2023 survey of the Irad Media Research Center the final was the most-watched sports broadcast of the year.^[5] Opposition figures and some clan leaders have described the award of broadcasting contracts by the Directorate as patronage, and animal welfare groups have criticized the game's use of carcasses and its rate of injury to riders and horses.^[3]

In popular culture

In the 1994 American cartoon episode "The Steppe Family Robinson", set during the territorial period, Homer Simpson enters the President's Cup on a borrowed Chongtor horse that bolts through the field and wins with Homer clutching the carcass.^[6]

See also

• Ulak Tartysh (Sport)
• Sport in Irad
• Irad State Hippodrome

References

1. ^ National Equestrian Sports Directorate (2016). Rules of Ulak Tartysh, revised edition. Talas.
2. ^ National Equestrian Sports Directorate (2023). Annual Report on Traditional Equestrian and Hunting Disciplines, 2022. Talas.
3. ^ Central Asian Sports Encyclopedia (2019). Equestrian Games of the Steppe Peoples. Almaty Press, pp. 88–114.
4. ^ Talas Herald (12 March 2026). 'Zharkyn leads the parade again, Maksat takes the salute.' Talas.
5. ^ Irad Media Research Center (2023). Television and Online Audience Survey of the ISEZ. Talas.
6. ^ Central Asian Cultural Studies Review (2019). 'Springfield on the Steppe: Irad in American Television, 1993–2016.' Vol. 11, pp. 102–121.