At the enlarged meeting of the Cabinet of Ministers of Turkmenistan held on January 9, which summed up the results of the last year, including on development of sport movement, it was sounded the following figures: having taken part in over 150 competitions of international level, Turkmen sportsmen won nearly 400 medals!
Turkmenistan never knew such high result. Less than a decade ago, single cases of victories of Turkmen athletes at the international tournaments were welcomed as great success. So only within several years, a real progress of national sport expressed in hundreds of medals has taken place.
So, if to take 2007 as reference point, when the country stepped new path of its development, the Turkmen sportsmen won only ten awards at the international tournaments. Among them, there were no gold medal – three silver and seven bronze medals. Only seven years later, in 2014, the prestigious awards gained by compatriots in persistent sport fight were increased nearly by 40 times – 393 medals (!), a third of which is gold!
Sources of the current attainments of national sport are successful realization of the state policy on development in the country of mass physical and health-improving movement and sports of high attainments. One of its major trends is the systematic modernization and purposeful expansion of sport logistics.
Sport facilities and specialized sport schools are constructed and opened in all parts of the country – not only in the capital, but in all regions as well. If in 2008, it was opened the first sport school for 365 pupils, then seven years later, their number in Turkmenistan, including remote settlements, has reached to 112 intended for training of over 40 thousand persons as a whole.
Such dynamics is also kept in opening of sport structures all over the country. So, for example, if the first three of new sport facilities were constructed in 2009, then by 2014, they are over sixty.
Alongside with quantitative indices, it is also observed the qualitative growth of sport mastership, which was expressed in sharp growth of gained gold medals. Beginning from 2009, the number of gold medals increased annually by two-three times, and in 2013, when total number of new sport schools and facilities reached fifty, the Turkmen sportsmen increased by four times the number gold medals as compared with previous 2012.
On January 15, making a speech before deputies of the Parliament, President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov highlighted the Laws “On physical culture and sports” and “On professional sport” among draft laws to be passed in 2015.
Origin in Turkmenistan of professional sport will become powerful impulse, capable of bringing sport sector of the country to qualitatively new level on the basis of development of commercial trend.
