Tag Archives: sport

Football fever grips Georgian capital and tests infrastructure

TBILISI/Georgia, JULY 2 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) — Football dominates conversation on the streets of Tbilisi. Its 51,000-seat Dinamo stadium will host the 40th UEFA Super Cup between Champions League winner Barcelona and Europa League winner Sevilla on August 11.

Tbilisi won the bid to host the Super Cup in the last few months of Mikheil Saakashvili’s government in 2012, the culmination of 1-1/2 years of negotiations.

“It’s a huge event for us,” said Boris Kiknadze, one of several thousand football fans in Tbilisi who are hoping to buy tickets for the big match. “Our teams are not great, so we never have big stars coming here. I am really excited to see Barcelona, if I manage to get a ticket.”

But that’s just the problem. Getting hold of a ticket has proved difficult, if not impossible. “It is a horrible mess here,” said Kiknadze. Biletebi.ge, an online ticket retailer, was selected as the main distributor of the game tickets. Used to selling tickets to jazz concerts and the theatre, rather than large sports events, it crashed seconds after thousands of fans tried to buy a ticket on June 22.

It restarted on June 30, introduced a virtual queue and allowed people 15 minutes on the website before timing out and four tickets per person. An estimated 140,000 people queued online for tickets. About 2,000 tickets were sold before the site crashed again.

Biletebi.ge said it experienced technical difficulties, and resumed sales on July 1 of the 4,300 tickets earmarked for people living outside Georgia. The remaining 22,000 tickets, reserved for Georgians, will be sold later this month at booths outside the stadium.

Tbilisi-based sports journalist Alastair Watt described what the match meant to Georgians.

“This is probably the biggest club match to take place in Georgia since independence (from the Soviet Union in 1991),” he said. “For the tens of thousands of Georgians who follow Barcelona, this is likely to be their only chance to see their team on Georgian soil.”

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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)

Azerbaijani capital closes first European Games

JUNE 28 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan brought the inaugural European Games to a close with another lavish ceremony at the Olympic Stadium in Baku.

Opinion was divided on whether the Games had been a success.

Attendance of both crowds and top athletes was low, espe- cially in the perceived blue ribbon athletics events although Azerbaijan’s new sta- diums were highly praised.

For Azerbaijani president Ilham Aliyev, the Games were an intrinsic part of his strategy to promote the country through sport.

Azerbaijan has sponsored football teams and plans to host a Formula 1 race next year. It will probably also bid to host the Olympics in 2024.

No expense was spared on the European Games, which featured Lady Gaga singing at the opening ceremony.

But complaints over Azerbaijan’s human rights record and a bus crash in the Olympic village which injured members of the Austrian swimming team overshadowed part the Games.

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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)

Azerbaijani athlete fails drug test

JUNE 27 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – The European Olympic Committee striped Chaltu Beji, an 18- year-old Ethiopia-born athlete competing for Azerbaijan, of victory in the 3,000m steeple-chase at the European Games after she failed a drugs test. The failed drugs test will embarrass Azerbaijan.

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(News report from Issue No. 238, published on July 2 2015)

Briton dies in car crash in Azerbaijan

JUNE 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – One British national was killed in a car crash in central Baku, media reported. He had been working on the European Games. At the start of Games a bus crashed into Austrian swimmers in the Olympic Village badly injuring one of them.

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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

Azerbaijan wants F1 team sponsorship

JUNE 23 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Azerbaijan wants to sponsor a Formula 1 team, sports minister Azad Rakhimov said. Mr Rakhimov said he would like to see a team race in the Azerbaijani national colours. Baku hosts an F1 race in 2016 and wants to increase its profile by sponsoring sports teams.

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(News report from Issue No. 237, published on June 25 2015)

IOC President visited Kyrgyzstan

JUNE 16 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Thomas Bach, president of the International Olympic Committee (IOC), travelled to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan as part of a short trip to the region. Mr Bach first travelled to Baku for the opening ceremony of the European Games and then to Tashkent, Dushanbe and Bishkek.

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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)

Turkmen President visits Azerbaijan

JUNE 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Turkmen President Kurbanguly Berdymukhamedov was one of a handful of international leaders to head to Azerbaijan for the opening ceremony of the European Games. In Baku, he held talks with Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev. Turkmenistan wants to send gas to Europe via Azerbaijan.

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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)

Azerbaijan’s President opens European Games

JUNE 12 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – At a lavish ceremony in the Olympic Stadium in Baku, Azerbaijani President Ilham Aliyev opened the inaugural European Games.

The focal point of the $95m opening ceremony celebrations was a haunting rendition of John Lennon’s Imagine by Mr Aliyev hosted a handful of global leaders, including Russian President Vladimir Putin and Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan. The leaders of Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, Belarus and Serbia also attended.

And the glitz and the glamour couldn’t displace all the criticism of Azerbaijan and its record on human rights over the past few years.

Irish band U2 used a concert in Montreal to call for the release of a number of political prisoners in Azerbaijan. In a strongly worded statement, Rupert Colville, the United Nations’ High Commissioner for Human Rights, heavily criticised Mr Aliyev and the authorities in Azerbaijan.

“These cases are indicative of a shrinking democratic space in Azerbaijan,” he said.

The Games themselves haven’t been without controversy either. Police arrested a bus driver who ploughed his coach into a group of Austrian swimmers walking on a pavement in the Olympic village and a partisan Azerbaijani crowd booed Armenian athletes at the Opening Ceremony.

Azerbaijan and Armenia are still officially at war over the disputed region of Nagorno- Karabakh.

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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)

Kazakh police arrested EXPO 2017 chief

JUNE 13 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Police in Kazakhstan arrested on corruption charges Talgat Yermegiyayev, two days after he had quit as the chairman of the company organising President Nursultan Nazarbayev’s EXPO-217 extravaganza.

The arrest will be a major embarrassment to Mr Nazarbayev who has pledged to crackdown on corruption in Kazakhstan.

Adilbek Dzhaksybekov, the mayor of Astana, was quickly given the job of heading EXPO- 2017.

For Mr Yermegiyayev, a powerful businessmen with links to the top of the Kazakh elite, his arrest marks a very heavy fall from grace.

Alongside him, police also arrested Kazhymurat Usenov on embezzlement charges. Mr Usenov was in charge of much of the construction work for EXPO-2017 in Astana.

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(News report from Issue No. 236, published on June 18 2015)

Azerbaijan prepares to open European Games

JUNE 11 2015 (The Conway Bulletin) – Under the glare of international media and the scrutiny of the human rights lobby, Azerbaijan’s President Ilham Aliyev prepared to open the inaugural European Games in Baku on June 12.

Mr Aliyev and Azerbaijan have been building up to this moment for years and view the Games, which last until June 28, as a chance to promote the country.

But the Games have also drawn major criticism of Azerbaijan’s recent human rights record. It has imprisoned journalists and locked up opposition activists.

One of the most high profile prisoners is Khadija Ismayilova, an investigative journalist who is in pre-trial detention. She is accused of goading another journalist into a suicide attempt.

On the eve of the Games, the New York Times published a letter from Ms Ismayilova.

“Azerbaijan’s best and brightest have been locked up, tucked away for the European Games. They didn’t want you to see or hear us and our inconvenient truths,” she wrote. “The truth is that Azerbaijan is in the midst of a human rights crisis. Things have never been worse.”

The Azerbaijani authorities have countered these allegations by accusing the West of an anti-Azerbaijan campaign.

Away from the rehtoric the build up to the Games has been fraught. A fire tore through a block of flats last month killing at least 15 people. It spread quickly because of foam stuck to the side of the building to beautify it for the Games. And earlier this week, a bus hit a group of Austrian athletes in the Olympic Vil- lage, badly injuring one of the synchronised swimming team.

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(News report from Issue No. 235, published on June 11 2015)