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Abzal Azhgaliyev (KAZ) enters the ice during the 2022 ISU World Cup Short Track Speed Skating in Salt Lake City (USA) @ISU
Nation Special: Kazakhstan hitting the heights
Abzal Azhgaliyev (KAZ) points toward a mountain range that provides a stunning backdrop for the city of Almaty, Kazakhstan’s former capital. It is where the 30-year-old and his fellow skaters on the Kazakh national team spent last summer, training at altitude in a bid to reach new heights on the ISU World Cup Short Track Speed Skating stage.
The off-season training camps in the mountains are part of a new training philosophy within the Kazakh outfit. It involves more dryland exercises and long rides on the road bike. The strategy was slowly adapted after spending a summer training intensively with the Netherlands six years ago.
“After I arrived in Heerenveen (in the Netherlands) to train together with the Dutch team, I had to ride a bike on the road for the first time,”
Azhgaliyev remembers. He struggled initially to adapt to the Dutch cycling culture.
“It was too hard for me. I couldn’t keep up but during my time there I kept on pushing myself. Eventually I got the hang of it. It was something completely new for me but I felt I was getting stronger.”
First Kazakh gold
His time on the bike that summer in the Netherlands paid off during the 2016/2017 season, when Azhgaliyev became the first Kazakh Short Track skater ever to secure World Cup gold; he won the Men’s 500m in Salt Lake City. Azhgaliyev would go on to collect four more medals that season, as well as silver in the overall World Cup 500m standings.
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Charles Hamelin (CAN), Abzal Azhgaliyev (KAZ) and Tianyu Han (CHN) during the 2016 ISU World Cup Short Track in Salt Lake (USA) @ISU
“It was an amazing feeling to win gold in Salt Lake City. It made me feel more confident, showed me it was possible to win medals in Short Track. The training sessions on the bike helped me, for sure. Now we train with a bike way more."
“When I first started out in this sport, almost nobody around me understood what I was doing. After my gold medal, that changed. Everyone was so happy for me – and they still are.”
On the map
Short Track Speed Skating remains somewhat of a minority sport in Kazakhstan but Azhgaliyev and his talented teammates including the 22-year-old Yana Khan want to make sure they continue to put their country on the map.
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Yana Khan (KAZ) competes during the 2022 ISU World Cup Short Track in Almaty (KAZ) @ISU
As a child growing up, Khan had never heard of the sport which now dominates her life. Khan got hooked on Short Track only after she watched the 2011 Asian Winter Games which took place in Kazakhstan.
“It was the first time I saw people compete in Short Track,” she says. “My father noticed I was excited about it. He said, ‘You need to try it out.’ I did, and after only one training session I was obsessed with it. The speed gives me such a thrill. Short Track is all I want to do.”
With Kazakhstan going on to finish fifth in the Mixed 2000m Relay at the Beijing 2022 Olympic Winter Games, the profile of the sport has grown in the country.
“I feel like more people are taking an interest in it,” says Khan, who was part of the Relay team in Beijing alongside Azhgaliyev.
“The Women’s team still needs some time to develop. We’ve a very young team now. Four girls are competing in their first World Cup season but that’s OK. I hope that our hard work will pay off in a few years.”
Home-crowd delight
On the Men’s side of the team, Kazakhstan has already demonstrated it’s a force to be reckoned with this post-Olympic season.
Azhgaliyev and his compatriots Adil Galiakhmetov and Denis Nikisha each won an individual medal in Salt Lake City in November, having teamed up to secure silver in the Men’s 5000m Relay during the first leg of this World Cup campaign in Montreal.
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Team Kazakhstan celebrates during the 2022 ISU World Cup Short Track in Montreal (CAN) @ISU
But all of them eyed bigger goals, having previously admitted their primary focus in the first part of the season was the World Cup meet in their homeland; the stage in Almaty’s Halyk Arena was set.
On the closing day of the fourth World Cup session, it was Nikisha who gave the crowd what they craved. The born racer bagged gold in the 500m (2) and marked his sensational victory on home ice with a proposal as he asked his girlfriend to marry him, and she said yes.
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Denis Nikisha (KAZ) reacts during the 2022 ISU World Cup Short Track in Almaty (KAZ) @ISU
“This is the best day of my life,” Nikisha, 27, said after he had presented an engagement ring to his wife-to-be. “When I woke up this morning there were only two words on my mind: ‘gold’ and ‘yes’.”
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Jang Sungwoo (KOR), Denis Nikisha (KAZ) and Stijn Desmet (BEL) pose during the 2022 ISU World Cup Short Track in Almaty (KAZ) @ISU
It was his first gold medal in a World Cup race since the 2016/2017 season, when he topped the 500m podium in Minsk (BLR). Nikisha, however, had everything prepared already.
“I made this plan a month ago,” he said. “Even if I wouldn’t have made the podium in this race, I’d have asked her to marry me. My dream has come true.”
Love in the air
Love was indeed in the air that day, as Nikisha was being roared on by an enthusiastic home crowd during all his races.
It was the three-time Olympian’s final opportunity to reach the top step of the podium on home ice. He got bronze in the 500m (1) the day prior to his win and took silver in the sprint distance during the third World Cup meet across this double-header of action in Kazakhstan’s biggest city.
