Kazakhstan: Olympic Blogwatch
Cross-regional and Blogosphere, KazakhstanOne Comment
The Beijing Olympics have moved political debates in the Kazakh blogosphere to the background.
Alim Atenbek is upset with the uniform of the Kazakhstani team [ru]:
Officials always want to make a buck on everything, and the Olympiad is not an exclusion. The government allocated 68 milion tenge for 226 kits - or 2,500 US dollars for each - but eventually the quality of fabric and tailoring was so bad that they had to remake it hastily. The tender for sale of tours to Beijing Olympics was very dubious too - a barely known tourist firm won it.
KZBlog also notes the poor quality of the uniform, saying that:
“the blazers have huge shoulder pads that make all the athletes look like little kids wearing Daddy’s business suits. And the orange skirts and little hats are way too bright on their own. The combination of white, bright blue and bright orange is a little hard to take!”
Mantrov-kz posts a list of money awards, announced by the government of Kazakhstan for the medalists (gold medal is worth 250,000 dollars), and points out that the Azerbaijani president promised $720,000 for each medal won by his sportsmen: “Here we have already lost,” he notes [ru]. However, the overall performance of the Kazakh team has been pretty good - as of now 8 medals are already in the Kazakhstan’s “piggy bank.” This is the same number Kazakhstan earned in the Athens Olympics. Wondernews found out a curious thing [ru]:
If the CIS republics performed as a single “soviet” team, they would have won the first place by the amount of medals in Beijing!
Meanwhile, epolet, a prominent political blogger in Kazakhstan, could not resist the temptation to draw attention to the political component [ru]:
All presidents of the Central Asian countries (Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan, Karimov of Uzbekistan, akiyev of Kyrgyzstan, Berdymukhamedov of Turkmenistan and Rakhmon of Tajikistan) have come to Beijing to watch the opening ceremony. Five countries were living without their presidents these days.
Cross-posted on Global Voices.
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