Turkmen athletes began training in Hangzhou, China ahead of the opening of the 19th Summer Asian Games on September 23.

The area of the Athletes' Village, where the Turkmenistan team moved in on Monday, is 799 thousand square meters. 37 multi-store residential buildings were built here for athletes from 45 countries. These are mainly 26-story buildings. But there are two and 38-story ones.

Turkmen athletes live in a 26-story building, occupying floors 3 to 5. Above – on the 9-11 floors – the delegation of the Kyrgyz Republic is located, reports the website “Turkmenistan: Golden Age”.

Around 12 500 athletes from 45 countries are expected to live in the Village at the height of the Asian Games. At their service are buses that take them daily on schedule to dozens of training facilities, as well as a huge dining room with 4 200 seats. For now, the canteen is operating strictly according to schedule. But after the opening of the Games, it will work almost around the clock until 1 am. The Village also has a fitness center with a 25-meter pool and gyms, a doping control center, a shopping center, a medical clinic, a cultural center where guests can learn the arts of Chinese Wushu, Kung Fu and the circus, and even a religious center with premises for prayers of representatives of various faiths.

Athletes can move around the vast territory of the Village on electric vehicles that run along a predetermined route with high frequency, as well as on bicycles, which can be rented for free from 9:00 to 22:00 from each residential building and dining room.

There is also a square in the Athletes’ Village where “Welcome ceremonies” are solemnly held for the teams participating in the Asian Games. For the delegation of Turkmenistan, such a welcoming ceremony is planned for September 22.

On the second day of his stay in the capital of the eastern Chinese province of Zhejiang, another athlete joined the Turkmenistan team - international master of sports in swimming Merdan Atayev, who had to make an almost 15-hour flight from Dushanbe in transit through Istanbul and Shanghai to Hangzhou.

In the capital of Tajikistan, where an international swimming tournament was held, timed to coincide with the fifth Consultative Meeting of the Leaders of Central Asian Countries and the next meeting of the Council of Heads of Founding States of the International Fund for Saving the Aral Sea, the 28-year-old student of the honored coach of Turkmenistan Sergey Epifanov performed very successfully. In competition with swimmers from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, Merdan won two gold medals in the 50 and 100 meter backstroke. Based on the results of all three days of competition, the Turkmen team brought 11 medals to the team - 2 gold, 5 silver and 4 bronze.

It should be noted that this year has been very successful for Merdan Atayev, a participant in the last two Olympic Games, who specializes in backstroke swimming. At three international competitions, he won 7 gold and 1 silver medals. Before the tournament in Dushanbe, Merdan received three highest-quality awards at distances of 50, 100 and 200 meters at the Asian Age Championships in Bangkok. He won two more golds in the 100 and 200 meters and 1 silver in the 50 meters at the Uzbekistan Open Championship qualifying for the 2024 Olympic Games.

In total, today M. Ataev’s track record includes 28 medals, of which 12 are gold, 11 are silver and 5 are bronze. He also holds six Turkmenistan records in high and low water at distances of 50, 100 and 200 meters.

Four days before the opening of the 19th Summer Asian Games, hot weather set in in Hangzhou - the air temperature in the capital of the Asian Games rose to 35 degrees C, which, given the high humidity existing here, feels like 43 degrees. All buildings in the Village have air conditioning. And in the open air, numerous volunteers and representatives of the local population save themselves from the scorching rays of the sun with umbrellas.

“We are afraid of getting sunburned, and that’s why all the volunteers and staff of the Asian Games were forced to buy umbrellas,” said the Russian-speaking Chinese woman Xi Zhaodi, or Zhenya, as she calls herself by her female Russian name, who works at the Asian Games as a translator, including with Turkmen athletes.

According to her, at the Asian Games in Hangzhou she was glad to meet the “friendly team from Turkmenistan,” whose athletes captivated her with “politeness, friendliness and sociability.”

“Athletes of Turkmenistan are very optimistic, because they always have a smile on their faces,” emphasized Xi Zhaodi.

The task of Turkmen athletes at the Asian Games is to raise the authority and prestige of domestic sports as high as possible, for which a lot is being done in the country, including under the personal patronage of President Serdar Berdimuhamedov and the National Leader of the Turkmen people, Chairman of the Halk Maslahaty Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov. Issues of further development of the Olympic movement, mass physical education and elite sports have been elevated to the rank of state policy of Turkmenistan.

Let us remind you that Turkmen athletes will perform at the Asian Games in Hangzhou in 3x3 basketball, boxing, freestyle and Greco-Roman wrestling, jiu-jitsu, judo, kurash wrestling, karate-do, athletics, swimming, weightlifting and wushu.