The sports delegation of Uzbekistan has arrived in the South Korean Incheon to take part in the 17th Summer Asian Games.

The sports delegation of Uzbekistan has arrived in the South Korean Incheon to take part in the 17th Summer Asian Games.

Members of national teams and officials from 45 nations of the continent got accommodated in the Games sports village that comprises three residential quarters of new 22-storey apartment buildings.

In order to organize the Asian Games at the highest quality level, a range of sports facilities has been erected in Incheon, including six arenas, an aqua center, a volleyball hall and a tennis complex as well as a Palace of Sports and a central stadium designed to host the opening and closing ceremonies of the 17th summer Asian Games.

The delegation of Uzbekistan is one of the large ones. It has included celebrated athletes like the judoka Rishod Sobirov, the boxer Oibek Mamazulunov, the track and field athlete Svetlana Radzivill, the tennis player Denis Istomin, the weightlifters Ulugbek Alimov and Ruslan Nurudinov, among others. It is noteworthy that many famed athletes of Uzbekistan – participants of these Games – were revealed during the unique three-tier sporting competitions, Umid Nihollari, Barkamol Avlod and the Universiade initiated by President Islam Karimov. It is these very competitions, held in full compliance with principles of the Olympic movement, serve, on the one hand, as a mass sports platform for hundreds of thousands of young people, and on the other, as a school for training talented athletes capable of properly upholding the honor of the nation in the international arena.

In the international zone of the village – the site of official, cultural, ceremonial events – the state anthem of Uzbekistan was played and the state flag of our republic was raised along with those of other participant countries.

“It is a great honor for us to represent the country in one of the most prestigious sports competitions, Asian Games,” Ulugbek Alimov, silver medal winner of the weightlifting world championship, has noted. “Today we have witnessed the procedure of officially raising our flag under the sounds of the national anthem of our country. Seeing how it waves over the sports village, one thinks that we are present here first and foremost owing to the independence, the favorable conditions created in our country for people to be into sports, and the great attention paid by our President to upbringing a healthy, comprehensively advanced generation. For us it is not merely a sport, it is life! We will try to justify the confidence laid on us and make high achievements.”

At the 17th summer Asian Games in Incheon, the best sportspeople of the continent are to compete along 50 types of sports. Around 300 athletes of Uzbekistan are to uphold the honor of the nation in 32 sports, namely, boxing, Greco-Roman and freestyle wrestling, judo, weightlifting, kayak-paddling and canoe, boat racing, slalom, track and field athletics, swimming, synchronized swimming, water polo, sports and artistic gymnastics, trampoline, shooting, tennis, WTF taekwondo, cycling, soccer and other sports.