People in the whole world like sport. Sports improves health, keeps a good form. Finally, it is an excellent pastime. International matches and tournaments unite nations; they play an important role in establishing of good relations between countries.
In Kazakhstan people always paid much attention to sports. Since 1991 the country has been participating in international sports contests as a sovereign state. For the development of the Olympic movement the National Olympic committee was founded in the Republic.
For the first time the Republic of Kazakhstan took part in winter Olympic Games in 1994 in Lillehammer.
2000 — At the Sydney Olympics, Kazakhstan won 2 gold and 2 silver medals
2004 — At the Athens Olympics, Bakhtiar Artaev became an Olympic champion in welterweight and the second in the history of Kazakhstan’s boxing after Vasily Jirov to be awarded the most prestigious trophy in boxing; the Val Barker Cup.
2008- At the Olympics in Beijing, Bakhit Sarsekbayev became the Olympic champion in welterweight, and Erkebulan Shynaliev won a bronze medal in light heavyweight.
2012 — At the XXX Summer Olympic Games in London Serik Sapiev won the welterweight gold medal and became the third Kazakh boxer awarded «Val Barker Cup». Adilbek Niyazymbetov won a silver award in light heavyweight, and Ivan Dychko bronze in super heavyweight. Held on for the first time in the history of the Olympic Games, in women’s boxing tournament Marina Volnova won the bronze medal in middleweight.
In the country there are many sportsmen of international class. Great attention is paid to the preparation of national combined teams. In Petropavlovsk, Shymkent, Kyzylorda, Stepnogorsk boarding schools for talented children have been founded. Different sports facilities are being built.
Astana hosts the sports complexes, tennis courts, stadiums, cycle track and other facilities. The Republic of Kazakhstan has its own system of higher class sportsmen preparing. There are 291 spoils schools of sports mastership. About 140 thousand children, teenagers and young people study there. The Kazakhstan’s sportsmen are among the strongest in Asia. They represent powerful competition for the sportsmen of China, Japan and South Korea. The combined team of Kazakhstan was quite successful at the Asian Games. The achievements of boxers are especially noticeable. Everybody knows Olympic champions from Kazakhstan Vassiliy Zhirov, Bekzat Sattarkhanov and Yermakhan Ibragimov. There are also achievements in track and field sports, Greek and Roman wrestling, chess. Judging by the results of the Olympic Games in 2000 in Sydney the spoils delegation of Kazakhstan took the 22d place among 199 participating countries.
After acquiring sovereignty measures for revival and development of national kinds of sports were taken in the country. As the results of these steps the first Competitions on the national sport Games in the history of the Republic were held. The participants from all parts of Kazakhstan had an opportunity to demonstrate their strength, beauty, boldness and skills. Major victories have been won by skiers track — and — fields sportswomen, boxers, wrestlers, hockey-players.
