Kazakhstan: Bloggers Discuss Olympian Results · Global Voices
Adil Nurmakov

Kazakhstan's performance at the Vancouver Winter Games was pretty humble with the only silver medal won by Elena Krustaleva in the women’s 15km biathlon. Elena is from Russia and until recently raced for Russia but Kazakhstan apparently bought her and the investment paid off, writes KZBlog.
Pacifistt reacts [ru]:
Krustaleva raced for various countries. She was not accepted in Belarus – thus she came to Kazakhstan. She does not actually belong here. I was glad, when she won the second place, but this has little to do with Kazakhstan, and Kazakhstan means little for her.
Another performance represents a success in future outlook. Denis Ten, a teen rising star of the world-class figure skating is groomed as a future champion after “a beautiful and technically almost perfect short and freestyle programs”, the blogger continues and adds that it was was rather good “for a 16-year-old competing with Pluschenko”.
Rosvet comments [ru]:
I think he's done a great job. 11th place in figure skating at the Olympic Games is a success. Have you ever seen any Kazakh in this kind of sports? He's just 16 … and may well win a medal in Sochi … On the other hand, there is no powerful national figure skating federation behind him – and the country's authority means a lot in sports.
It should be said that there are problems not only with separate sports federations. KZBlog laments over the Kazakhstan Olympic Commitee's website:
I went [there] to find out more information about Kazakh athletes. I hoped to find interesting facts about them so I could blog about them … and generate some interest about Kazakhstan Winter Olympians in the world … And what did I find? The profile stolen from the official vancouver site – and for most of the profiles, it’s really boring because all we have here is name, height, weight and date of birth!