FISU delegation examines the preparations for the Winter Universiade 2017 in Almaty

ALMATY – From 27th of April, the delegation of the International University Sports Federation is conducting an inspection visit in Almaty. During the visit, the FISU leadership examines the readiness of venues of Winter Universiade 2017 and holds working meetings with the staff of the Organizing Committee.

Lead by Winter Universiade Director – Milan AUGUSTIN, the FISU delegates had the opportunity to talk about various functional areas, such as: sports services, accreditation, branding, look of the games, volunteers, transportation, medical services, accommodation, food and beverage, publications, opening and closing ceremonies, as well as delegation services and others are being discussed during the working meetings with the Organizing Committee.

Due to the some changes in the organization and allocation of the operational budget to the WU Almaty Organizing Committee some important projects which are related to their preparations are behind schedule. Contractors of main games services have not been defined yet and it has become to the priority of the OC to speed up their selection process to finalize all necessary vacancies.

The sports infrastructure of Ice and Snow sport venues coming to be a huge legacy for Almaty city and for Kazakhstan itself. Newly constructed Athlete’s village, Ice Palace (twin arena) with the capacity of 12000 seats, Ice Arena (twin arena) with the capacity of 3000 seats are on-going process and will be ready by August 2016. These sport venues will host Opening & Closing Ceremony, Figure Skating and Ice hockey Men.

However some renovation and improvement of infrastructure of the Snow sport venues like Shymbulak Ski resort- Alpine skiing, Freestyle skiing, Snowboarding; Sunkar – Ski Jumping Complex, Alatau- Cross Country skiing and Biathlon are still in process mainly to be ready with snow making system that must be ensured. Even if FISU delegates have still some concerns, we hope that all the renovation works will be done on time as required.

More than 80 people are full time working currently in the OC. The whole team is very enthusiastic and full of energy to organize the best ever WU in the FISU history.

On May 2nd, the Supervision Committee of FISU has started its visit in Almaty and examine the preparations for the Winter Universiade. Marian Dymalski (POL) – Chair of CSU and Kairis Ulp (EST) – Vice Chair of CSU will be during upcoming 4 days visiting all venues and meeting the authorities of the Directorate of the Organization and Almaty city to conduct open dialog about overall WU 2017 preparation.

(Source: WU department)