Torukashka

Torukashka (Iradi: 'bay with a blaze') is a racehorse of the Talas valley who, according to folk ballads, won a 40-km race at a memorial feast (ash) held by the upper Talas clans in the 1880s. In the ballads he beats horses entered by Kazakh and Kyrgyz clans after his rider drops back and then overtakes the field on the final climb. Some versions name the breeder Kalyk Asanov as his owner.^[1] No contemporary Russian record of the race is known, and folklorists place the ballads in a wider Kazakh and Kyrgyz tradition of songs about racehorses.^[1]

References

1. ^ Department of Ethnography, Talas State University (2012). Ballads of the Horse: Irda Texts from the Talas Valley. Talas: Talas State University Press, pp. 58–66.