You may know the Kazakhs of Kazakhstan as Cossacks, the “free men” of the steppes. Like other steppe nomads, they have a history of eating horse meat and drinking mare’s milk. Now, the Kazakh Olympic boxing team is shipping such energizing fare to Athens. From Yahoo! News – Trust in Mare’s Milk:
Kazakhstan are pinning their hopes of Olympic boxing gold on traditional nomadic fare and will ship horse meat and mare’s milk to Athens to boost their fighters’ stamina.Kazakh boxing team coach Yermakhan Ibraimov, who won gold as a light-middleweight in Sydney in 2000, confessed plain yet energizing nomadic food had been the key to his own success.
‘Seeing me off to Sydney, my father gave me horse meat and kymyz,’ Ibraimov told the popular Karavan weekly.
The slightly heady, centuries-old kymyz is fermented mare’s milk, treasured by the Kazakhs as a fizzy cold drink in the summer heat.