Turkmenistan Set to Attract Sportsmen and Women From Around the Globe

By Michael Rocha-Keys in Ashgabat, Turkmenistan

One of the fastest growing economies in the world is poised to move spectacularly into the international sports competition and training sector.

Turkmenistan – a Central Asian nation four times the size of England, but with a population of only five million – is building a 157 hectare, 30-venue sports complex in its capital city, Ashgabat.

By 2017, this vast new facility will be available as a training and competition venue for sportsmen and sportswomen from around the world.

It will consist of 30 state-of-the-art venues – including indoor arenas, equipped multi-sports training halls, training facilities for track and field competitions and the largest velodrome in the world.

Key features will include a 45,000 seat football and athletics arena and a 15,000 seat basketball, volleyball and handball stadium. An athletes’ village is being constructed and will be equally impressive – with 12,000 beds.

Ultra-modern, the complex will boast hotels, restaurants, a high-tech medical centre and a monorail system to allow sportsmen and women to move around in comfort and speed.

The complex is being created to host the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games in 2017.

The construction process began less than three years ago – but I can report that it is progressing well and will be able to provide ultra-modern training and competition facilities to the sporting world.

To showcase the progress being made in constructing the new international sports complex, Turkmenistan has just held an International Sports Media Forum near to the complex itself in the nations’ capital, Ashgabat.

I was there as the Senior Partnerships Manager of iSportconnect, now the world’s largest global private network of sports business executives.

The ‘Turkmenistan International Sports Media Forum  2015’ (TISMF) saw sports journalists and others from around the world travel to Turkmenistan’s capital city, Ashgabat, to tour the Central Asian nation’s emerging international sports  complex and experience first-hand Turkmenistan’s preparations for hosting the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games in 2017 (AIMAG 2017)

By creating the new sports facilities and by convening TISMF 2015, Turkmenistan is using sport as a powerful tool to open up to the world as well as to increase and improve international relations and cooperation.

Turkmenistan is a country of great potential, boasting both natural beauty as well as very valuable natural resources. Current research shows they have the fourth largest natural gas reserves in the world and the second largest single gas field in the world. 

Currently handling the PR for the Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games in 2017 and organising the Turkmenistan International Sports Media Forum is the London-based company,  Jon Tibbs Associates. Its Chairman, Jon Tibbs, told iSportconnect: “Turkmenistan’s sports assets are the world’s best kept secret.

“The purpose of these events is to allow for the first time ever an insight into the astonishing progress that Turkmenistan is making in their sports development.

“The media who visited Ashgabat this week have seen first-hand one of the most innovative and compact multi-sports complexes on the planet. Now they hopefully realise that Turkmenistan has arrived on the sporting map.”

Chungwon Choue, President of the World Taekwondo Federation, added: “I’ve been very impressed by the white city of Ashgabat.

“It has to the cleanest city in the world. My father always said that peace is more precious than triumph but I am sure that the AIMAG will deliver both peace and triumph in 2017.”