Kazakh Fans: ‘Elena Rybakina Probably Has An Allergy To The Kazakh (State) Flag’ – OpEd

Kazakhstan, which had just narrowly failed to obtain tenth place in the overall ranking at the London Olympics in 2012, didn't win a single gold medal during the previous Olympics in Tokyo in 2021. This result was perceived to be a significant setback for the Kazakhstani sports. The disappointment of Kazakh sports fans didn't end there.

At the 19th Asian Games, held from 23 September to 8 October 2023, in Hangzhou, China, Kazakh athletes won 80 medals - 10 gold, 22 silver, and 48 bronze - surpassing their previous worst one, set at the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta and Palembang. At that time, six years ago, the Central Asian nation had taken 9th place in the overall medal standings. Thus, Kazakhstan for the first time since its participation in these continental complex competitions held every four years had left the top 5. Before that, Kazakhstan had been entering the top four at five out of six Asian Games, behind just China, Japan, and South Korea, and only once, in 2010, it gave up this position to Iran and moved to 5th place.

So, after the 2018 Asian Games in Jakarta and Palembang, articles appeared in Kazakhstan under headlines: “Asian Games 2018: flop for Kazakhstan”, and “Total failure. Kazakhstan had the worst performance in the history of the Asian Games”. If one proceeds from the foregoing, one may assume that Kazakhstan experienced an even more total failure, as it now dropped from the top 10 and only managed to come in eleventh at Hangzhou 2023. 

Therefore, it comes as no surprise that such a situation caused serious concern at the highest levels of the Kazakhstani government. On October 11, 2023, while receiving Kazakh medalists of the 2023 Asian Games in Hangzhou at his residence in Astana, Kazakh President Tokayev noted that the nation's performance in sports leaves much to be desired. “This situation is unacceptable; there is a need to carry out cardinal reforms in this sector”, he added.

Let's see what is the situation now. The Paris Olympics now are in full swing. Before they began, there had, as far as can be judged, been certain excited expectations among the Kazakh high-ranked officials concerning possible Olympic wins by some of the Kazakhstani athletes. In this sense, there seemingly were high hopes for Elena Rybakina. 

She has been on a special account at the Kazakh political elite lately. The Kazakh President's attitude towards her has been unique. Kassym-Jomart Tokayev has time and again congratulated Elena Rybakina on her victories in regular tennis tournaments. He has also greeted her with Happy Birthday just recently.  Accordingly, the Kazakhstani society has developed a unique feeling of elation towards her. This all has been widely covered by the national mass media. Accordingly, the Kazakhstani society has developed a unique feeling of elation towards her. Confirmation of this is, as evidenced by Vassily Konov, a Russian journalist, a huge picture of Elena Rybakina on the wall of the Embassy of Kazakhstan to France in Paris not far from Arc de Triomphe.

And all anything, Yes only Kazakhstan can no longer expect anything from Elena Rybakina at the Paris Olympics in 2024. The country's top tennis stars like Elena Rybakina and Yulia Putintseva, another native of Russia, withdrew from the Olympic games citing illness, injury, and fatigue. Here's how Sportskeeda, in a report entitled “Exactly why players shouldn't be bought" - Fans react to Yulia Putintseva joining fellow Kazakh Elena Rybakina in withdrawing from Paris Olympics”, characterizes the reaction of the Kazakh fans to their withdrawal from the competitions: “Unsurprisingly, fans reacted harshly to Yulia Putintseva pulling out with one set opining that the Kazakhstan Tennis Federation should develop local players instead of facilitating the switching of nationalities for Russians. “Exactly why players shouldn't be bought.. Homegrown players would've perhaps felt differently than Yulia & Elena!” a fan wrote. “That's what happens when you buy players unless build them in your country”, commented another fan. “Paying for players and then they do you like this”, another fan chimed in. 

Another set of fans turned blatantly critical towards Yulia Putintseva and Elena Rybakina suggesting that their Russian origins prevent them from being loyal to Kazakhstan the nation that has been instrumental in building thriving tennis careers fo the pair.  “Kazakhstan should stop sponsoring players from Russia, they don't care to represent their new colours”, wrote a fan.“Well, they’re Russians!”, another fan weighed in”.

Sports.kz, a Kazakh media outlet, in an article entitled “Allergy to the Kazakh flag”. Kazakhs do not trust Elena Rybakina after her withdrawal from the 2024 Olympics and ask her to be “removed”, says: “Many fans could not ignore Rybakina's latest refusal to compete for Kazakhstan and recalled similar cases that had happened to her earlier: “Has she won anything with Kazakhstan? She withdraws from the competition whenever there is a need to play for the national team”; “She always has problems when it comes to playing for the Kazakh national team”; “She probably doesn’t have bronchitis, but an allergy to the Kazakh [State] flag”.

Funny things keep happening in Kazakhstan regarding Elena Rybakina, the world number 4 female tennis player. Her successes are a topic that finds huge resonance not only among Kazakh decision-makers, but, with the help of the state-controlled television, print, and online outlets, as well as other media in Kazakhstan, with ordinary people. Kazakhstani government officials usually appear willing to walk into the light of her fame in the moments that matter. She was met at Astana Airport on returning to Kazakhstan following the victory at Wimbledon 2022 by cheering crowds of fans and Yeraly Togzhanov, then deputy prime minister of the Republic of Kazakhstan. He greeted Elena Rybakina by saying: “The President was rooting for you. The whole [Kazakh] country was rooting for you. Kazakhstan stands with you!”.

After being crowned the Wimbledon champion in 2022, Elena Rybakina reached her second Grand Slam final in less than seven months at the 2023 Australian Open but was unable to win this time. While delivering her Australian Open runner-up speech, she paid tribute to the president of the Kazakhstan Tennis Federation who had specially flown in to watch the final. This decisive match and the official ceremony of awarding its winner and runner-up would seemingly have been a spectacle so worthy of the whole Kazakhstani public's regard. 

But here's the odd thing about it: as far as is known, on this day none of the all-Kazakhstani public television channels, which are available to all groups of the population in all areas of the country, showed a live broadcast of the Australian Open women's final match. KazSport, the main sports channel of the country, aired the VTB United League game between Astana and Yenisei live at the time.

Given the aforesaid, it is tempting to conclude that statements like ‘The President was rooting for you. The whole [Kazakh] country was rooting for you. Kazakhstan stands with you!’, these are merely rhetoric, nice sounding words, politically correct messages motivated by considerations of the Kazakh ruling regime's positive image-building, which, however, are not backed by concrete actions in the interests of the general Kazakhstani audience. 

One cannot help the impression that among the establishment in Kazakhstan, a country overwhelmingly populated by ethnic Kazakhs, there are want and resources for the practice of attracting promising athletes of Russian and White (Caucasian) origin engaged in such Europe's, America's and Australia’s most popular and favorite sports, as tennis and cycle race, but not for the purchase of the right to broadcast, say, the Australian Open and Tour de France events. 

This author, anyway, doesn't remember a case when some Grand Slam events or some Pro-Tour events would have been broadcast live on this or that all-Kazakhstani public television channel.

In this ‘remarkable’ story, one can guess not so much a wish by the Kazakh elite circles to make their country recognizable to the Western world,  as... a desire by them to gain authority and a high reputation through the successes of those costly foreign-born athletes in the eyes of Russia, as well as all other white nations. 

While the question of whether the general Kazakhstani audience has the opportunity to watch those costly athletes' performances and successes, appears to be not so important for them. Sorry for the bluntness, but how else can one explain the above situation?!

Here is something to think about, if one considers that, according to some experts in Kazakhstan, ‘in our country, a huge number of officials are still in the grip of colonial thinking and watch Russia, the Russian ideology and media with an open mouth’, and even ‘President Tokayev sees the situation in his country through the eyes of Russian propaganda media’. 

While Russia - as a state, a country, a nation, and a society - projects its specific system of values primarily onto the Kazakh elite circles. There it - to call things by their proper name - is accepted to despise everything [East] Asian, while marginalizing Asians (Kazakhs, Buryats, Kalmyks, and their like) themselves living in the Russian Federation, and to love everything white Western, even despite the current confrontation between Russia and the West. 

And it must be said, that Russian authorities often believe that racist insults against Russia's citizens of [East] Asian origin should not be perceived as something offensive. Here is a vivid example of this. In July 2021, Anfisa Chekhova, a famous Russian socialite, TV host and model, compared Buryat women with ‘bomzhikhi’ (it means unpleasant looking female vagrants, sunk to the depths of poverty and squalor). It caused a storm of resentment among Buryatia’s titular ethnic group members. The Russian authorities in Moscow - officials and MPs - looked then like they could care less what the Buryats were saying. Buryat ombudswoman for human rights, Yulia Zhambalova, asked the Investigative Committee of Russia to check Chekhova's speech for possible violations of law. However, this appeal did not bring about any tangible results. In September of that year, Roskomnadzor (the Russian federal executive agency responsible for monitoring, controlling, and censoring Russian mass media) told Yulia Zhambalova: “Anfisa Chekhova's statements do not contain signs of extremist speech actions aimed at inciting ethnic hatred”.

At times, such an attitude finds its continuation in Kazakhstan. As the saying goes, ‘a bad example is infectious’. Lukpan Akhmedyarov, a journalist based in Uralsk, names a pair of Kazakhstani ethnic Russians who publicly described ethnic Kazakhs as ‘monkeys’. Against such a background, Kazakhstan continues to financially support several sports clubs - specifically Astana Basketball Club, Hockey Club Barys, and Astana Qazaqstan Cycling Team - where there are very few ethnic Kazakhs. Things are quite similar in Kazakhstani tennis.

This practice began in the second half of the 2000s. The Wall Street Journal, in an article entitled ‘Arena Ball - Back Before You Knew It Was Gone’ and published on April 15, 2009, said: “No talent? No problem. Kazakhstan is hiring. Kazakhstan is the latest post-Soviet state determined to become a tennis powerhouse, but there's just problem: a lack of decent Kazakhstani players”. 

So then, the country's tennis federation began hiring promising athletes of other nationalities. These were mainly Russian tennis players. To illustrate the kind of situation that has existed since then, we may consider the following excerpt from a NewsUnrolled article by Regina: “Changing citizenship in tennis is easy. Unlike many other sports, the International Tennis Federation (ITF) does not require athletes to be quarantined... Kazakhstan has been hosting Russian tennis players since 2008... In the Davis Cup and Billie-Jean King Cup, only local tennis player Zarina Diyas is in Kazakhstan’s national teams. Yes, and she took tennis lessons in Prague, where her family has been working since 1999. Diyas was even called up to the Czech national team. All other Cossacks are former Russians and a few people from other republics of the former Soviet Union”.

In the Central Asian country, the practice of attracting promising tennis players of other nationalities has lasted all these years. One of them, Moscow-born Elena Rybakina, has become the first player representing Kazakhstan to win the Wimbledon title (in 2022) and to qualify for the final at the Australian Open (in 2023). 

It seems relying on foreign athletes is beginning to live up to expectations. It would seem that something remarkable happened Kazakhs should be quite happy about. Yet actually, they do not appear very enthusiastic.

In Astana Qazaqstan, a professional road bicycle racing team sponsored by the Samruk-Kazyna, a coalition of state-owned companies from Kazakhstan and named after its capital city Astana, there is not a single ethnic Kazakh (!!!) among its 29 riders. 

There are many more such cases. A long ago it became clear that excessive participation of foreign athletes in the Kazakhstani national teams and sports clubs does not help the development of Kazakh sports, but hampers it. Nobody can deny that. 

Abzal Azhgaliev, a Kazakh short tracker, who had showed the best result among Kazakhstanis at the 2022 Winter Olympics in Beijing and then told about his desire to prove that [ethnic] Kazakhs were no worse than others at winter sports, later spoke about the challenges he and his teammates face in organizing trainings. “Those who pay more get more ice time [for practicing]. We don't even have our own locker room”, he said.

The Kazakh authorities and society have agreed that such a situation is abnormal and requires correction by joint actions, but no real measures have been taken to remedy it.