Translation of Adam’s post.

Construction time in Astana is in decline, and crisis proved that the larger is the project, the fewer are its chances to be completed. Therefore, the second reason why Asian Winter Games (so-called Asiad) will partially be held in Astana is, probably, to justify extra budget funding for completion of grand projects (the first reason for moving some parts of the Games to Astana was to “show our capital to the world” and to save costs for construction of sports venues in Almaty).

First, it is the football (!) stadium, where it is planned to run the opening ceremony. It is said that the stadium is “roofed” to calm down the public that is going to watch the show, directed by the same people who recently staged Eurovision show in Moscow. In fact, only the stands are covered with roof there as protection from rain and sun. Now, you imagine people, who would be watching the opening ceremony there on regular winter day of January 30.

The second one is indoor skating stadium. It was planned [ru] to build the similar stadium in Almaty, the city that won the right to host the Games. But construction started earlier in Astana, so the Almaty project was put on a shelf.

Construction of both – football and skating – stadiums have been ordered by the government from Sembol Insaat, as well as most other projects of this Turkish company (it wouldn’t be surprising to me, if the company also partook in lobbying the move of the Games from Almaty to Astana).

The third one is totally beyond common sense [ru]:

According to Talgat Yermegiyayev, Vice Minister of Tourism and Sport, the budget of the Asian Winter Games can be added up due to change of technical parameters for a number of sports facilities. In particular, he explained that they “would like to change technical parameters of the bicycle track to make it multipurpose”.

Attention, here’s the question: How is the cycle track related to winter sports?