Aug 04 2007

Nur Otan Event In The Park

Category: Kazakhstan,Personal,PicturesChrisM @ 11:52 am

Woke up this morning, and when we looked out the window, we saw something going on, over at the entrance to Astana park.
There were a lot of old Kazakh buses, so it looks like some companies bussed in their workers for some reason.

NurOtan Astana Park 4th August 2007

Then we saw a couple of flags flying and a guy started speaking over a PA system. People in white shirts started milling around, and then a cycling team turned up. I don’t know if it was the Astana team that recently made an early exit from the Tour de France, as I recently blogged on, over at Kazakh Cyclist Shames Astana Tour de France Team Out Of Competition. Anyway, it appears that the political party organized an event for people to see the cycling team, and the event was well attended.

Cycling Team NurOtan Astana Park 4th August 2007

Around 30 minutes later, everyone had gone from the park, and there were no more flags being waved.

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Jul 25 2007

Kazakh Cyclist Shames Astana Tour de France Team Out Of Competition

Category: In The Media,Kazakhstan,PersonalChrisM @ 12:05 am

Kazakh cyclist Alexandre Vinokourov has tested positive for blood doping (the transfusion of another person’s oxygen carrying red blood cells) in the Tour de France. The entire Astana team has now withdrawn from the competition. He has of course requested for a second sample to be tested, but it is incredibly unusual for a second sample to be clear…
At the time of writing this post, his website ( www.alexander-vinokourov.com ) was working, however the news page was unavailable. As far as I can tell, there is a Dutch news snippet regarding the doping allegations on the front page.
[Update]
Now the entire site is down. My guess is that as it is currently a few minutes past the hour, many news programs will have mentioned his name, so a lot of people will have been visiting his site; perhaps the server could not take the strain?

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