After a string of coincidental meetings, weather induced cancellations and some pretty slick work with a friend's FOP pass, I ended up going up three cable cars to the very highest point of Chimbulak in the company of Russian Ice Hockey Legend Alexander Maltsev. (Actually 'Aleksandr').
He had coached the Kazakhstan Women's Ice Hockey team to Gold the day before. He had not smiled throughout the competition but was in a very good mood today.
Maltsev was Alex Ovechkin's favorite player growing up and an absolute legend for the Soviet Hockey Powerhouse of the seventies and eighties. It was a thrill to chat with him. After all this was the man who scored a record 213 international goals for Russia. Seriously.
His assistant coach (sitting alongside) said I had slightly mispronounced 'Tukhtiyeva' in my commentary. Thanks for that mate.
At the top of the mountain, you were meant to be able to see into China, but I don't think you really could. It was still a pretty long way away, and Kyrgyzstan was in the way.
It was awesome up here.
It was awesome up here.
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| Me & China (a long way behind me) |
Then I went to watch the Giant Slalom. They were giving away free hot chocolate which was a bonus. I'm not sure that Giant Slalom is a great spectator sport. Also, the range of competition meant that some athletes took 50 seconds to come down the course and some took 4 minutes. There were snipers in the mountains and all over the place there were mean looking stoney faced security guards who looked like this:
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| Stoney faced security guard, almost certainly armed. |
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| A Ski Marshall Tests The Giant Slalom Course |
Then I got the bus down the hill back to Almaty. Walked for miles around Almaty to get a last-day look at the place I'd spent the last week and a bit in. Someone said to me the other day that all the best food in Almaty was Turkish food. So didn't resist when Kalbaeva and some local students insisted on buying me a little kebab wrap, although really I should have been allowed to pay for it myself. Ridiculous kindness. One of them told me about the history of Kazakhstan in extraordinary detail and pretty good English. Then I chatted with the guy in the Juventus cap about football. A lot of football chat goes on here. For some reason, I ended up playing a game of Russian snooker which turned out to be impossible and much less fun than it sounds, and then said some goodbyes, handed back my mobile phone and took another bus to the IBS to pick up my cheque. Now, let me tell you about getting a bus in Almaty.... There were modern ones like the ones the media used, then there were the public ones. An Almaty bus. It had curtains on the windows, like the sort of curtains you would get at a home, and normal wooden chairs for the drivers and ticket collectors, not secured to the bus in any way, but like house chairs, and the lights had sort of tassels like a lamp shade on them.
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| Lights in the bus |
I don't think Almaty gets a lot of English or American visitors so often you are asked random questions about life, especially by young Kakakis. All the young people I met, volunteers, translators, students were bright and delightful and were fascinated to know what we like in England, especially football, music and films. I was asked if I liked Twilight and The Notebook. I explained that they were really popular in England but that I hadn't seen them myself. I was asked about Muse and Shane Ward. Then one young girl asked me if I had "seen a film called Borat?" Oh boy, I had gone the whole week without anyone from Kazakhstan asking about it and without mentioning it, but now it seemed that none of this group of students had seen Borat and were keen to find out what it was about. I left out most of the offensive details, in fact ALL the offensive details, and assured them that people in England didn't really think that cars in Kazakhstan were pulled along by donkeys. They said that it story was accurate in one respect in that people in Kazakhstan used to be obsessed with Pamela Anderson.
So, that is just about it. For the record. A week in Kazakhstan commentating on Ice Hockey. Working for IGBS with whole bunch of really great Canadians and the UK commentating legend Simon Reed. Broadcasting in a nice but sometimes strange country. Nothing like in Borat. Hours can go by and you could be anywhere in Europe, but then something odd happens, or you try and get a coffee and realise you are a long way from home. I missed home a lot, but this was an interesting and fulfilling trip, I met some fantastic inspiring people, and there were some really good hockey games thrown in.
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| Me with Neil Chiplen my summariser |
For CC, MC and MC
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