On a muddy field in Kyrgyzstan, eight teenagers on horseback thundered back and forth playing a Central Asian version of polo known as kok-boru. But instead of mallets, they used their bare hands, and in place of a ball was a headless dead goat.
Sixteen-year-old Begimai Bakirova galloped along while trying to hold onto the goat carcass as it slowly slipped down her horse’s flank. Two boys rode on either side of her, jostling, yelling and grabbing for the goat. Spectators scattered from the sidelines as the riders and horses approached at full gallop.
The game was not an unusual sight in Asylbash, a village of a few hundred wood and clay homes near the Tien Shan mountains in Kyrgyzstan, where kok-boru is the national sport. The unusual sight was Begimai — a woman — in a game that has been played for hundreds of years almost exclusively by men. Last year, Begimai and five other teenagers formed the first women’s kok-boru team in Kyrgyzstan.
“Every girl has her passion,” said Begimai, whose short black ponytail stood out among the crew cuts on the pitch. When people tell her that kok-boru is “not for women,” she said she tells them that if a woman has the skill and the desire, then kok-boru is for her too.
“I would like more parents to let their girls play,” she said.
Despite negative comments online and criticism in the village, Begimai’s team has been inspiring a small but growing number of women and girls who want in on the rough-and-tumble sport.
Kok-boru means “gray wolf” in Kyrgyz and originated as a game shepherds played with a wolf carcass. A goat was swapped in later. Variants of kok-boru are played across Central Asia, but in northern Kyrgyzstan, it is usually played between two teams of four riders who vie to grab a goat carcass from the ground or each other, and chuck it into a large basin on either end of the field.
The game is tough on both riders and horses, which can collide at high speeds. In 2025, two men died playing in Kyrgyzstan.
Since Kyrgyzstan became independent after the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, it has sought to revive traditional sports but paid most of the attention to men’s disciplines, like kok-boru, said Elena Molchanova, a social scientist at the American University of Central Asia, who has written about gender roles in Kyrgyzstan’s traditional sports.
But a women’s kok-boru team “isn’t a break with tradition,” Professor Molchanova said, because women on horseback have always had an important role in nomadic Kyrgyz society and legend.
Begimai, the fourth of six siblings — five sisters and one brother — began riding horses when she was young. She began to take a serious interest in kok-boru after attending several matches in which her brother was competing.
She started training with her father, Baktybek Beishekeev, who raises horses and once competed in kok-boru.
The most difficult part of the sport is when the rider has to bend down from the horse, often at high speed, low enough to grab the goat carcass off the ground and then lift themselves, and the heavy carcass, back into the saddle.
Every day, Mr. Beishekeev, a wiry 47-year-old, and his daughter would ride three miles out and back to a neighboring village. Along the way, Begimai would practice leaning down from her horse to hoist a car tire up into the saddle, over and over.
Through “crying and tears,” Begimai said, she eventually mastered it.
The safety concerns are real. Begimai was knocked off a horse in February and broke her arm.
“It’s a disease,” said Begimai’s mother, Nurgul Osmonova, talking of kok-boru with a defeated laugh. “I didn’t allow it. I still don’t allow it. It’s their father.”
Nevertheless, in early 2025, Begimai started playing in informal matches with her brother. She started winning too.
In February, after her kok-boru videos on Instagram went viral, Begimai realized there were several girls around Kyrgyzstan who were quietly playing kok-boru too. She decided to gather them together.
Begimai, two of her sisters and three other girls from the local district played together for the first time in March, 2025. It was kismet. They decided to form a team that day.
“We’ve become like sisters,” said Aisuluu Birimkulova, a 17-year-old with an easy laugh and competitive streak, who taught herself to play kok-boru in another village before hearing about the team.
The team has competed a dozen times against boys’ teams over the past year Begimai said.
The women play because they love the challenge and love “bringing boys to tears” when they beat them, Aisuluu said.
Aisuluu’s mother, Meerim Karabaeva, said that she has seen how kok-boru has benefited her daughter.
“She’s barely on her phone,” Ms. Karabaeva said proudly over tea in Kara-Sakal, a village 30 minutes east of Asylbash. “In the evening, she goes to bed at 9 so that she can get up at 6 in the morning to feed her horse.”
But it’s hard to recruit. Few girls play kok-boru or ride well enough, and potential members often live too far away, Begimai said. Many others want to play, but their parents won’t let them because they think it’s too dangerous, or not for girls.
One cool afternoon in early March, shortly after Begimai’s brother, Nursultan, finished decapitating, disemboweling and sewing up the goat in the family’s backyard, the group rode off toward the playing field on the edge of the village.
Soon, every teenage boy with a horse from the surrounding villages seemed to have heard kok-boru was afoot, and it was time for the games to begin. In the first match, Begimai grabbed the goat first and careened in wide circles around the marks in the dirt that the village uses in place of the usual scoring basins. But even with Begimai’s teammates fighting to clear her a path, she couldn’t get close enough.
“Why are you so far out?” her father shouted. “Go for it!”
The girls lost 0-2 in their first match but won the second, as Begimai pushed her way through a pileup to twice drop the carcass down onto the marks, eliciting cheers from the crowd.
The girls’ Instagram posts about the team have attracted support and plenty of interest, but they have also brought a flood of criticism, especially from those who say a woman’s place is in the home.
“Whenever we put ourselves out there, they write comments, but we don’t pay attention,” said Shoola Kenenbaeva, 16, another team member.
Begimai and her sisters said they get disapproving looks and snide remarks around their hometown.
“Because of those mean words,” Begimai said, “I really fell into a depression, and I couldn’t get out of it. Only when I went out and my female teammates showed up could I let that go.”
Last year, the country’s Kok Boru Federation told local media that it didn’t support women playing at all, because the sport is so rough and dangerous.
But, Akylbek Eshimov, who served as federation president from February to mid-July of this year, reversed course.
“I’m wholeheartedly in support. If possible, we’ll help from the federation’s side too,” Mr. Eshimov said in an interview this spring, sitting in his office.
Back on the field, it was getting late. Soon the family would skin the goat carcass, now thoroughly tenderized, cook it in a large pot over an open flame and serve it with onions and herbs.
But Begimai wasn’t quite ready to quit. “Let’s play one more,” she entreated as everyone circled up. The other girls were exhausted, but enough boys were game.
Begimai galloped off toward the carcass lying in the dirt. The lonely ponytail bounced on her back.
“She’s easy to get going,” her father said. “She’s hard to stop.”
