The Desert Turkmenistan has opened a magnificent winter sports palace

planned sports complex

Ashgabat - In the desert of Turkmenistan, a grand winter sports center was officially opened on Wednesday evening. The complex, located in the capital Ashgabat, where summer temperatures reach nearly fifty degrees, includes a stadium for ice hockey and figure skating for 10,000 spectators, training facilities, and the first hockey academy with a dormitory capacity of 350 places. This was reported today by the AP agency.
    The ceremony, attended by foreign figure skaters and circus performers, was greeted by spectators waving green and white balloons, and was observed by the authoritarian president Gurbanguli Berdymukhamedov, who is known for his obsession with sports, loves to ride horses, and participates in various martial contests.
    Berdymukhamedov plans to spend billions from the country's mineral wealth on an "Olympic complex," even though Turkmenistan has not won a single Olympic medal since gaining independence after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, and hopes of being awarded the host city for the Olympics in the near future are slim.
    Turkmen athletes primarily compete in equestrian sports and wrestling. Turkmenistan has never participated in the Winter Olympics, where warm or hot weather prevails for most of the year and snow is a rare occurrence, although it reportedly plans to send its team to the next games in Sochi, southern Russia, in 2014.
    The newly opened hockey stadium is part of the first phase of the construction of the complex, which is expected to include around 30 sports facilities, including a swimming pool, a cycling track, badminton and tennis courts, and a bowling alley.
    By 2016, additional facilities will be added, including an "Olympic stadium" for 60,000 spectators and an "Olympic village" for 12,000 people, which will be connected to the sports facilities by a modern monorail.
    The idea to build a winter sports palace was introduced by the previous president Saparmurat Niyazov. He turned Turkmenistan into one of the most repressive regimes in the world and had a number of extravagant buildings constructed in a country where a large majority of the population still lives in poverty. He spent millions earned from the sale of natural gas on marble palaces and golden statues to fuel his cult of personality. However, the winter sports palace was intended to portray Niyazov as a benefactor who thinks not only of himself but primarily of the people.
    Niyazov wanted winter sports to be practiced on top of the mountain overlooking Ashgabat. Visitors would reach the resort by cable car, and children could learn to ski there.