EDIRNE, Turkey — On a grass area slick with olive oil and steeped in custom, a whole lot of boys as younger as 11 joined the ranks of Turkey’s most time-honored sporting occasion: the annual Kirkpinar Oil Wrestling Championship.
Held each summer time within the northwestern metropolis of Edirne, the occasion is alleged up to now again to the 14th century as a approach of preserving the Ottoman Empire’s preventing males match and prepared for battle.
The game, which is on UNESCO’s intangible cultural heritage listing, sees wrestlers cowl themselves in olive oil and attempt to press their opponent’s again to the bottom to win the bout.
Alongside the boys contesting, children additionally don the long-lasting “kispet” leather-based trousers to embark on a slippery check of power, talent and stamina beneath the scorching solar.
The boys are ranked in divisions primarily based on age, top and construct, with the youngest typically positioned within the “minik,” or tiny, class. Below strict security laws, their matches are shorter and carefully supervised.
Most younger wrestlers prepare year-round at native golf equipment, usually in cities the place oil wrestling is handed down via generations.
Whereas the youngest rivals aren’t wrestling for titles like “baspehlivan,” the grand champion of the boys’s matches, their participation isn’t any much less vital as it’s key to the continuity of a sport that holds deep cultural significance throughout Turkey.
This yr’s contest – the 664th in its historical past – noticed 36-year-old Orhan Okulu win his third males’s title.
“My objective was the golden belt in Kirkpinar and because of my God, I succeeded,” Okulu mentioned of the coveted prize.