Kazakhstan intends to become one of Top-Thirty winning countries in 2012 London Olympic Games

Kazakhstan is planning to be among the Top-Thirty of winning countries in the 2012 London Olympic Games. Talgat Yermegiyayev, Sport and Physical Education Agency chairman said this during a governmental teleconference, Tengrinews.kz reports. “We are planning to win at least three gold medals - one more than we won in Beijing Olympics. We aim at the total of 13 medals. This will place us in the third ten in the overall country standing,” Yermegiyayev said. He explained that Kazakhstan performed successfully in 1996 and 2000 Olympics and said that it could well be so that our athletes would gain more medals this time. Apart from this Yermegiyayev told about Olympic athletes trainings prior to the Games and asked the government to make a decision on some additional funding for the athletes. “We have already discussed allocation of additional funds (997 million tenge ($6.7 million) jointly with Samruk-Kazyna Fund. This is required to create conditions for high-quality training of our athletes at the final stage of trainings prior to the Olympic Games. I am asking you to support this initiative, taking into account that all the sports countries usually allocate this kind of funding. This attraction of extra-budgetary resources will create conditions for Kazakhstan's achieving the high sport results and winning more medals,” Talgat Yermegiyayev said to Prime-Minister Karim Massimov. Agency's chairman added that Kazakhstan needed it own National Anti Doping Center, because lack of this facility creates a missing link in the chain of anti doping measures in sport. Karim Massimov in his turn asked the Ministry of Finance and Samruk-Kazyna National Welfare Fund to consider allocation of the required additional funding.