Kyrgyz Sportsmen for Hire

As state support for sports in Kyrgyzstan suffers from chronic underfunding, many sportsmen have turned to careers in the private security sector, just to earn a living. Some are drawn into organised crime where their strength is an asset.

Wrestling, boxing and other martial arts are particularly popular in Kyrgyzstan, but the state has done little to support these or other sports in recent years.

Baygazy Kenjebaev, director of the government agency for sports, put this down to political upheavals – Kyrgyzstan has had two revolutions since 2005. This has been reflected in continuing turmoil within Kenjebaev’s own agency, and he is its fifth head in as many years.

The national Olympic Committee pays team members just 21 US dollars a month during training, while coaches earn between 130 and 320 dollars a month, averaging 215 dollars.

Sportsmen with the right skills turn instead to work as bodyguards for politicians, as security staff protecting buildings, and in some cases racketeering.

Economic pressures led Keneshbek Shabatjaev to abandon a ten-year professional career in the Russian martial art sambo to become a security guard for a private firm.

He could have worked as a coach, he said, but it would still have been difficult to support his wife and daughter on the wages on offer.

An ex-wrestler told IWPR how he too decided against getting into coaching because of the money. Now earning five times a coach’s salary as a bodyguard for a prominent Kyrgyz politician, he did not want to be named because of the sensitive nature of his work.

“If [sports coaching] had paid well, I’d be back doing what I really like,” he said.

Alisher (not his real name) abandoned his dream of making his name in wrestling three years ago and began a criminal career that would eventually land him in prison.

From the age of 12, he wanted to enter the Olympics as a Greco-Roman wrestler, and subsidised his training with a part-time job selling mobile phones.

“I used to imagine myself winning, hearing our national anthem, seeing the flag raised, and being awarded a gold medal,” the 23-year-old said.

When Alisher was 20, friends told him about a man who was looking for strong athletes and offering them good money, and he felt he could not turn down the chance.

“I needed to survive somehow,” he explained.

Soon he was extorting protection money from market traders for a local gangster, and earning around 430 dollars per month, four times what he made from selling phones.

He also started dealing in drugs, and was convicted but then released on probation. Alisher has now stopped selling drugs but still works in extortion.

Kenjebaev acknowledged there was a major shortfall in funding for sports, and said that in the current economic climate it was hard to imagine the situation improving.

Government funding is especially important in a country like Kyrgyzstan where there is little private sponsorship available.

Kenjebaev said that given the current realities, the government should at least help sportsmen move into law-enforcement rather than crime.

Young athletes are often enrolled at specialised high schools, and some go on to attend sports academies.

One route is emigration to former Soviet republics, Europe or the United States, where sporting skills offer a ticket to better wages.

A minority are able to study for a second profession and enjoy successful non-sporting careers.

For those who wish to pursue sports in Kyrgyzstan, the career choices are limited to coaching at sports clubs and colleges, where the pay puts off everyone but the most dedicated enthusiasts.

Freestyle wrestling coach Karmyshaly Akmatov earns 320 dollars a month, a top salary for a well-known figure with 20 years’ experience.

He has urged the authorities to provide more support to sportsmen, especially after they have peaked.

“Many of our champions are unemployed. I’ve told officials about the situation – we send them to competitions and exploit them to the maximum, but when they reach the end of their sporting careers, we leave them without a job,” he said.

Akmatov said organised crime might look like a lucrative option for young sportsmen, but is was dangerous and almost impossible to get out of once someone got involved.

“They ask – as a joke – why they should become coaches, and say they’d rather be a bodyguard, a security guard, [a racketeer] at the Dordoy market, or an enforcer. But that’s exactly what happens to them,” Akmatov said.

He knows of at least 20 former wrestlers who have been killed after joining criminal gangs.

“Their cases have never been solved; they’ve just been closed,” he said. “They were good guys.”

Yrysbek Mamyshev, a wrestling coach at the national school where up-and-coming athletes are trained for Kyrgyzstan's Olympic team, says Olympic medallist wrestlers like Ruslan Tyumenbaev and Kanat Begaliev are popular role-models who attract many would-be sportsmen.

Nurlan Kuranov, a member of the freestyle national wrestling team, said sport was one of the few areas where this small and impoverished Central Asian state could shine at international level, if only the funding was in place.

“There is this feeling that in other areas we aren’t able to showcase Kyrgyzstan, but at least we can do it in sports,” he said.

Timur Toktonaliev is an IWPR journalist in Kyrgyzstan. Anastasia Akimova is an IWPR intern.