AlmatyPersonal travel impressions in stories and pictures from Almaty, Kazakhstan. Click on the pictures to enlarge, send as a free e-card, or download for personal use. You can locate Almaty and navigate the world using Google Earth Show on map
N 43° 15.162
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Before covered skating rinks were constructed, Alma Ata was the "Mecca" for skaters to break world records. Since for a long time it was part of the Soviet Union, and the Soviets had their own very strong skaters, somewhere in March the most fantastic records were made by their own sportsmen. Western skaters were hardly allowed to skate in Medeo.
Times have changed, there is no world record anymore which was skated on the famous ice rink of Alma Ata, and Kazakhstan is an independent country. Still, the name has a special ring to those interested in speed skating, and when I was in Alma Ata for the first time in my life I had to skate on Medeo of course. When I entered the skating rink, saw the old pictures of famous skaters, and the old pieces of wood carrying the records of Medeo, I was thrilled. It is strange to be walking in a place about which you have fantasized, which has had an almost mythical name.
Nowadays, the rink is in decay and there are hardly funds to maintain it. The ice is perfect, and there is almost no one skating. When I skated there, I was with only 3 other persons... The setting is still dramatic: high snowy mountains all around, which sometimes produce that effect for which the rink was famous, a wind going around the stadium resulting in skaters having the wind from behind twice each lap. There are not many places in which I have felt so clearly the effect of changing world. This place, before jealously guarded as one of the places where Soviet skaters could prove their supremacy over Western ones, is now in neglect, in decay, and one can almost wait until one november it is not even opened anymore.
