Earlier this year the seventh edition of the Almaty Half Marathon took place, organised by the team behind the Almaty Marathon. Founded in 2012 by the businessman and philanthropist Galimzhan Yessenov, and the mastermind of the race, Aizhan Yessim, the Almaty Marathon team has since run over 100 mass participatory sporting events, and the Marathon itself has grown to become the largest running event in Central Asia. Approximately 200,000 people have participated in the races over the years, and 8,000 participants took part in this April’s Almaty Half Marathon.

Businessman and philanthropist Galimzhan Yessenov set up the first Almaty marathon and now is promoting disable sportsmen who have become competitors

Among them were a group known locally as Vinogradov’s XI – a team of people with disabilities who are a regular fixture at participatory sporting events in Kazakhstan.

Maxim Vinogradov, after whom the group takes its name, is an activist for urban accessibility who created the team in 2022 to share his passion for running events and support others with disabilities. For this year’s edition of the Half Marathon, the Almaty Marathon team presented Vinogradov’s XI with specialised racing wheelchairs produced by Flying Start and included wheelchair participants in the overall race classification for the first time – all part of a wider push to develop inclusive sports in Kazakhstan and Central Asia, an historically challenging region for those with disabilities.

“I have been participating in the Almaty Marathon races since 2016, covering different distances in a special racing wheelchair. This was first enabled when the race organisation helped procure a dedicated wheelchair delivered from the UK. The donors behind the Marathon helped procure a further ten racing wheelchairs in 2022, to help expand access to sport for those with disabilities in Kazakhstan,” Vinogradov said.

“Access to sport has been a major benefit in my life, and I cover 150 km per week in training in my specialised wheelchair. Now the aim is to expand this project, as there remains significant gaps in access to sport for those with disabilities here in Kazakhstan,” said Vinogradov.

In another step towards inclusive sport in Kazakhstan, this year the Virtus World Half Marathon & 10K Road Race Championships 2024 for para-athletes with intellectual disabilities was held as part of the Almaty Half Marathon for the first time, meaning Kazakhstan has become the first country in Central Asia to host the event. Para-athletes from Portugal and Bulgaria, Japan and Poland, China and Spain, Sweden and Kazakhstan took part in the competition, including 2023 European half marathon champion Cristiano Pereira from Portugal. A team of six para-athletes from the Federation of Sports for Persons with Intellectual Disabilities represented Kazakhstan in the Virtus competition.

Yessenov, co-founder of the Almaty Marathon, initially intended the race to be a one-time event when it first took place 13 years ago. He has since seen the benefits of broadening access to sports in Kazakhstan, he says, noting that annual participation in the full-distance Almaty Marathon has grown from 2,500 in its first year to over 15,000 participants from more than 50 countries today. He anticipates significant further growth, with demand for sporting events in Kazakhstan continuing to climb.

He detailed his team’s strategy for driving this growth, noting inclusion as the first of three key principles. “Sports should be accessible for everyone, regardless of athletic background. With each edition we focus on improving access including for those with disabilities, and this year’s edition of the Almaty Half Marathon saw our focus on neurodivergence and intellectual impairments enhanced,” Yessenov said.

Secondly, the Marathon team focusses on environmental impact. “Big sporting events are often challenging from a sustainability point of view,” Yessenov explains. The Marathon team has moved from disposable items including race handouts to entirely electronic documentation for participants, and introduced separated waste collection on race days.

The Marathon team’s final pillar is social inclusion, which Yessenov sees as key for enhancing the appeal of its events. “We make sports accessible for everyone, help deliver free training, work with charitable partners, and encourage volunteers to help deliver our events – all working towards making people in Kazakhstan understand sports can be a tool for positive social change.”

Almaty, Kazakhstan’s largest city, has become a regional haven for running over the past decade. Where previously only a handful of expats could be seen jogging in the city streets, today the running community in the city comprises more than 10,000 regular participants and over 20 running clubs, with a high proportion of these being city locals. A range of other sports organisations and events have cropped up across the city over the past decade, spurring the growth in the number of commercial sports facilities and equipment businesses.

A goal of the Marathon team is to spread running across the entirety of Kazakhstan. Yessenov explained that the team has “already taken the first steps in this direction by organising races in Kazakhstan’s capital Astana, in the north, and in Turkestan, in the south of the country.”

For Kazakhstan, there are benefits beyond having a healthier and more active population. Much of the country’s vast landscape is unknown to tourists, but are a haven for those embracing the ever growing sports of hiking and trail running.

Whether it’s improving inclusion, helping societies get healthier, generating economic activity, or boosting tourism, there are clear benefits for a country embracing participatory sport. There’s much more to be done in Kazakhstan and in its neighbouring countries, but there’s a clear momentum in Kazakh sports.