The Footprints of History – Kazan Universiade Museum

Karina ShayakhmetovaKAZAN – Wonder how Kazan started its journey with the Universiade? Just go to the Universiade Museum, and you will find the answer. Opened since June 29^th, the Museum, which is located at the Main International Center of the Universiade Village, provides 3 different kinds of collections, including the development timeline of the Kazan Universiade, Russian athletes’ involvement in the Universiade, and an exhibition of previous Universiades.

Within the first step into the museum, you will see a wall full of pictures on the right hand side. These pictures represent the pathway how Kazan strived to hold the Universiade. Started from the event attribution in 2008, these pictures show us how Kazan began their construction in the city, how they sent their volunteers abroad to learn, and how the torch relay went around the globe.

When speaking about volunteering for the Kazan Universiade, there is also a wall of collections which is related. The curator of the Universiade Museum, Karina Shayakhmetova, was also among one of the volunteers who went abroad in the 2009 Belgrade Universiade. This was the first volunteer project for the Kazan Universiade. “It was an amazing experience, it helped me as I learned a lot.”

Ever since then, the OC has sent numerous volunteers to events such as the 2011 Shenzhen Summer Universiade, the 2011 Erzurum Winter Universiade and the London Olympics, to get experience from other hosting nations. From this point, we can see that the Kazan OC did put a lot of effort in training volunteers, in order to provide better services to visitors.

If you want to experience the feeling of holding a torch, you can also visit the nice museum. There is a real torch in the museum that visitors can actually hold and take a picture. Volunteers of the museum will also post the picture on the facebook page of the Kazan Universiade. Currently, the amount of visitors has reached the 4,500. The curator expects that till the end of this event, the number can be doubled.

Jie-Yao Ma (TPE), FISU Young Reporter