Kazakh experience can improve sporting achievements of Uzbekistan

Very soon, on July 26, the Summer Olympic Games will begin in Paris, where Uzbekistan will be represented by 65 athletes in 15 disciplines. The leadership of the republic set the task of improving the results in comparison with the games in Tokyo, where the focus on martial arts turned out to be a “failed idea.” The existing experience of Kazakhstan will help Uzbekistan improve the system of development of big-time sports, Liter.kz reports with reference to the Uzbek publication “Pig”.

How is the sports management system structured now?

At the previous Summer Olympics, held in Tokyo in 2021, the country won five medals – three gold and two bronze. Those results were considered unsatisfactory, and the country’s leadership set a goal for the current Olympics to improve them. This became known in February of this year. At one of the meetings, President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev announced the allocation of two trillion soums for the development of sports for the current year.

Shavkat Mirziyoyev instructed to “intensively prepare” for the Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games, which will be held in Paris. According to him, the emphasis on martial arts at the last Olympics was a “failed idea.” Back in winter, the Ministry of Sports was given instructions to create conditions for training athletes in 15 Olympic and Paralympic centers and 14 sports bases in Tashkent, Andijan and Tashkent regions.

Editor-in-Chief of the sports portal Olamsport.com Kamoliddin Alimov recalls that earlier in Uzbekistan, Shavkat Mirziyoyev paid special attention to both professional and amateur sports. According to him, almost every month new resolutions and presidential decrees are issued aimed at supporting athletes, and meetings between the head of state and athletes are held.

An expert at the Bilim Karvoni Research Center, Zakir Usmanov, noted that the sports federations of Uzbekistan are on the balance of the state, and it is the state that ensures their functioning. An important point is that each sports federation is assigned to ministries and departments. For example, in the football federation the president is the chairman of the state security service. That is, the federation is administered and controlled by this service.

But such a system has limitations. State funds for bringing professional sports to a higher level are not always enough. This is being corrected by attracting private investors. At the same time, the expert draws attention to the experience of neighboring Kazakhstan, where the fields of tennis, boxing, wrestling and chess have received great development.

How is Kazakhstan’s experience useful?

A large number of world-famous athletes in these and other sports was the result of building its own system of federations and attracting business to develop the sport. We can say that high-achievement sports there are already largely financed from private funds. For example, entrepreneur Bulat Utemuratov actively invests in tennis, and Timur Turlov – in supporting the development of chess.

Another example is the National Olympic Committee of Kazakhstan, which does not receive funding from the state budget, since this is simply not provided for by the country’s budget policy. The committee receives funding from funds that it itself attracts – mainly from private large businesses. Such a system was built under the leadership of former NOC President Timur Kulibayev.

Studying such international experience is very important, given the country’s desire to improve its performance in international competitions, as stated by the President of Uzbekistan Shavkat Mirziyoyev.

Another interesting practice in Kazakhstan, in addition to the massive attraction of private sponsors, is the unification of the most “medal-intensive” sports under the auspices of one “Confederation of Combat and Strength Sports.” The confederation built a unified management system for finance and management. Successful practices in managing the training of athletes, applying an individual approach to training planning were also introduced, and money was directed strictly towards the training of athletes.

And this gave concrete tangible results. At the Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro in 2016, Kazakhstan received 17 medals at once, and most of them were in martial arts and strength sports – boxing, wrestling, weightlifting and judo.

In Uzbekistan, each federation works and deals with athletes separately. Perhaps studying the Kazakh model can help improve the republic’s results at the Olympics in the near future.

And the third difference is the investment of money in the training of not only the athletes themselves, but also sports specialists and coaching staff. In contrast to attracting foreign experts, as is being done now, it is possible, following the example of Kazakhstan, to send its promising functionaries to study abroad. Having received useful knowledge, they will leave it in Uzbekistan and pass it on.

A similar proposal was once initiated by the former head of the National Olympic Committee, Timur Kulibayev, so that specialists in the category of “physical culture and sports workers” could be trained within the framework of the “Bolashak” foreign scholarship program. This made it possible to train future specialists in this field abroad and keep them in the country. This approach could bring direct benefits to Uzbekistan.

It is important to note that Kazakhstan, although it received fewer medals than Uzbekistan at the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, had a more representative delegation – there were 115 Kazakh athletes in 27 sports versus 67 Uzbek athletes in 17 sports.

This is considered good international practice. Firstly, in this case there is a greater chance of earning medals in a greater number of sports. And secondly, this shows a more uniform development of all disciplines within the country, since in fact the athletes managed to obtain licenses at world championships before the Olympics. This directly shows that the country allocates significant funds for sports, which are provided to all athletes without singling out “selected” disciplines.

This may be the potential for Uzbekistan to improve its performance not only at future Olympics, but also at international competitions at various levels in general, writes the Khuk publication.