This newspaper and its readers might remember the piece about Kartuli Chidaoba – the Georgian-style wrestling – which ran a year ago, more precisely, on May 29, 2025. Then, it was mentioned that Chidaoba deserved to reach the level of the Olympic Games, becoming one of its competitive sports. Amazingly, there is another kind of sport with the same claim to figure among the Olympic sporting events, and that is Menchurua – the purely Georgian swimming style, brought to our time by ancient Georgian seafaring and athletic tradition, which deserves the attention of the athletic world in general.
Here is why: Menchurua is about stamina, physical strength, mental power, skill, endurance and guts – all the features one needs to possess to compete in the Olympics. Menchurua was introduced in Georgia in time immemorial as a folksy type of entertainment, full of traditional and down-to-earth charm, attracting both the performers and the crowds equally with its plainness of character as well as the intricacy of its rules.
Menchurua is not technically recognized as an official swimming style but, judging by its skill-oriented features, level of performability and physical usefulness for the human body, it may very well trigger thoughts about turning it into a subject of broader international tournaments.
The ancient Georgian water-dexterity system includes three types of swimming style: ZEZELA – the standing position with thrown-up hands, treading and floating vertically in the water; MKHEDRULI – with bound hands and feet, having the limbs tied in four areas of the body, using the power generated from the torso, hips and lower back, reminding one of dolphin undulation; and Menchurua, the aquathlon, alias water-wrestling, in which two competitors try to push each other down into the water so that the water covers the head of one or the other, meaning defeat for one and victory for the other.
Incidentally, popularizing Menchurua among Georgian youth – and not only among them – makes children’s lives safer because humanity has recorded tens of thousands of cases of drowning for the simple reason of not having the skill to fight perilously treacherous waters. It would not be an exaggeration to say that our boys and girls, spending a minimum of one third of their daytime aimlessly peeping into their cell phones, truly need that help.
And there is a man in Georgia, in his enviably healthy mid-eighties, a true guardian of Georgian traditional sports and their heroes, who is doing all he possibly can to let the old sporting traditions of Georgia survive and reach the modern level of practicability, including the opportunity to enter international fields of activity. His name is Gvanji Mania, a well-known public figure, journalist, ecologist, local historian, regional specialist, traveler and explorer. By the way, the fascinating idea of the annual celebration of Tbilisoba – the calendar day of the Georgian capital city – belongs to this brilliant Georgian gentleman.
In one of his numerous articles, Mania says that it is his and his fellow-thinkers’ sacred goal to see the three Georgian – in other words, Colchian and Iberian – swimming styles on UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, alongside the three types of Georgian writing, Georgian polyphonic folk singing, Kvevri wine-making culture, and Georgian wheat culture. He strongly believes that the three Georgian swimming styles will soon find their deserved spot in Olympic programs, not only for their originality and Olympic usability, but also because all existing types of bouts, such as boxing, judo, Greco-Roman wrestling and freestyle wrestling, happen to be overland sporting events.
On top of all that, part of their dream is to revive and imitate the complete sea route of the Colchian fleet’s legendary chase of the Argonauts to recover the Golden Fleece, as well as to establish a unique river-navigation and land-equestrian tourist route within the Georgian section of the Silk Road.
Dreams are dreams, but Gvanji Mania is a man of his word, having already shown the country that most of his projects of this sort have successfully come to fruition. There is no reason not to believe that Menchurua, the truly beautiful and verily significant Georgian aquatic sporting event, will successfully make its way to the Olympic pinnacle.
Blog by Nugzar B. Ruhadze
