UNIVERSIADE 2017, ALMATY

A Hotspot in Winter 2017

“I’m really excited, because I’ll be competing in front of a large audience in my home country for the first time”, says athlete Zhanbota Aldabergenova, 21. Aldabergenova, who placed sixth at the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi, heads the Kazakh freestyle ski team. Now, she’s focussing on the upcoming Winter Universiade in the city of Almaty, home to more than a million and the economic center of Kazakhstan.

The Universiade, held every two years and organized by the Fédération Internationale du Sport Universitaire (FISU), is one of the biggest events on the international multi-sports calendar. From January 29 to February 8 2017, participants will be competing in Almaty in 12 winter sports disciplines, when the approximately 3,500 student athletes from 55 countries go to their starting line.

PRINOTH ROLLS OUT THE WHITE CARPET
PRINOTH is official supplier, and will be exclusively responsible during the Universiade for maintaining the ski runs in the alpine disciplines. In addition to snow groomers, PRINOTH will also be providing its expertise in the form of service technicians and demo drivers. And will roll out the red carpet together with its partner Eurasia Mountain, member of Eurasia Motors Group, Kazakhstan’s biggest distributor of recreational and special purpose vehicles, with affiliated service center.

AND MILLIONS ARE WATCHING
Winters in Almaty usually have considerable snowfall; towering up to 16,400 feet, the mountains not far from the city are always covered with snow and ice. Just 22 miles from the city limits are the ski resorts of Shymbulak and Tabagan, which have been upgraded and enlarged for the Universiade. This is where the competitions in alpine skiing, snowboarding and freestyle skiing will be taking place. More than 100 TV stations across the globe will be reporting on the games. The event should therefore give a considerable boost to developing tourism at these winter sport resorts.

Zhanbota Aldabergenova also hopes more young people will learn to share her love of winter sport, and especially that her discipline will become more widely known. “I hope that after the Universiade more people will know about our sport, and will try it out. Nowadays, when I talk about aerial skiing, people still say: What’s that – some kind of dance?”