China has not officialy requested Kazakhstan to return Chinshanlo

China has not apply to Kazakhstan Foreign Ministry with a request to return Chinshanlo, Tengrinews.kz reports citing official representative of Kazakhstan Foreign Ministry Altay Abibullayev. “During today’s telephone conversation with our ambassador in China he told me that Chinese weightlifting management center, as well as Chinese Foreign Ministry had not applied to Kazakhstan with a request to return Zulfiya Chinshanlo. Thus, Kazakhstan Foreign Ministry deems it inappropriate to comment the artificial informational rush created by Kazakhstan’s media,” Abibullayev said. The official representative stressed that this issue is within the competence of Kazakhstan Agency for Sport and Physical Culture and the Weightlifting Federation. He also noted that the practice of transfer of sportsmen is widely used in the world under certain conditions. “This is not an invention for Kazakhstan or China,” Abibullayev added. Kazakhstan Weightlifting Federation also received no letters from China about the return of Olympic champion Zulfiya Chinshanlo, Federation’s Secretary General Mendykhan Tapsir told Tengrinews.kz. “There has been nothing of such kind,” Tapsir said calling everything Chinese media wrote about Chinshanlo a lie. Earlier Chinese representatives stated that China was going to insist on return of Kazakhstan champion and had sent a couple of official letters to Kazakhstan but got no replies. Deputy head of the weightlifting team of Hunan province Chzhou Zun Fu said that the issue will be solved via diplomatic channels, if Kazakhstan did not let Chinshanlo go. However, Chinshanlo's personal coach Viktor Ni also denied receiving any letters with demands from China saying that he had never heard anything about them. Chinese media earlier stated that the weightlifter received her Chinese ID in the Public Security Department of Changsha city on October 22 and was going to perform as a member of Chinese national team, as her 5-year contract with Kazakhstan allegedly expired. Meanwhile, on October 27 Chinshanlo came back from China and announced that nothing written about her in Chinese media was true: “I would like to say that everything written about me in China is not true. I have proved it by coming back to Kazakhstan and being here right now. I would like to thank everyone who supported me. Once again, all these rumors are lies and I don’t want to return to discussing this issue again,” she said.