Tatarstan: A unique republic, A unique investment opportunity
What investors say about investing in Tatarstan
Tatarstan: supporting innovative start-ups
Tatarstan in the capital markets
Tatar banks expand with help of western capital
Taking Tatarstan’s petrochemical resources into the future
Tatarstan’s new Special Economic Zone Alabuga
Tatarstan’s thousands of years of culture
Kazan: home to some of the best sports facilities in Russia
But that has changed with the construction of a sparkling new ski resort just half an hour from the city. The Kazan complex, which opened in 2006, boasts eight ski runs, three ski lifts up to a kilometre long, two hotels, and a small village of beautiful wood chalets, which are available to rent for $300 a weekend.
The complex’s owner, Ravil Ziganshin, says: “Four years ago, there was nothing here. Now, we’ve already built the slopes, including adding a 50-metre peak to an 150-metre natural plateau for the main slope. We’re now building a golf course and a shooting range.”
The resort is in a beautiful spot, at the meeting of three rivers, including the Volga, with an ancient monastery on the island of Sviyazhsk. But will the Tatars take to skiing? Sioumbel, a 30-year-old manager from Kazan, is having her first lesson on the slopes. She says: “It’s not as hard as I thought. I’ve already been down the slope three times. Now I understand why my sister always comes here at the weekends!”
The Kazan complex is just the latest in the city’s cutting-edge sports facilities. Kazan also has a football stadium, home of Rubin FC; a basketball stadium, known as the Basket-Hall, which is home to UNICS; an ice-hockey stadium, home to Ak Bars; and the finest hippodrome for horse-racing in Russia.
The hippodrome, which opened in 2005 as part of Kazan’s millennium celebrations, is a truly unique facility, the first hippodrome of such a level in Russia. It covers 89.4 hectares, and the stands admit over 6,000 spectators. The race-track is 1,800 metres long, with 1,600 metres of turf. The show-jumping lawn is 100 by 150 metres, designed to hold any type of jumping and dressage competitions. It held the World Cup for trotting last year.
Local team Rubin has probably one of the most striking stadiums in Russia, situated as it is right in front of the Kremlin, with the spires of Kul Sharif mosque providing a picturesque backdrop to the players’ efforts. The team, which includes several international players, has recently been putting in performances to match its handsome home-ground. It only qualified for the Russian premier league in 2003, but came third that year, thus moving into the UEFA Cup. It qualified for the UEFA Cup again last year.
While Rubin can claim to be one of the best football teams in Russia, Ak Bars can claim to be one of the best ice- hockey teams in Europe, having won both the Superleague East and the Superleague West in the 1990s. It returned to those winning ways in 2006, when it won the Russian Championship. You can see Ak Bars play at the Tatneft Arena, which has a capacity of 10,000.
You can see both local basketball team UNICS and, often, the Russian national basketball team play at the Basket-Hall, which has a capacity of 7,000. The Russian team often plays here, because basketball commands a bigger support group here than in Moscow.
Marat Safin, winner of many grandslam tennis titles and defender of Russia’s Davis Cup, is a native Tatar, for example.
But perhaps Tatarstan’s most consistent success is at the Lisbon-Dakar rally, the gruelling cross-desert rally that is considered the toughest off-road rally in the world.
The Russian-Tatarstan team, organized by Tatarstan truck company Kamaz, has won the rally seven times in the last decade. It has always been firmly supported by the prime minister of Tatarstan, Rustam Minnikhanov, who is himself a master and winner of many European and Russian rally championships.
For those of you who prefer their sport a little less adventurous, Kazan also has some of the best gym facilities in Russia. Planet Fitness, for example, has three large gyms here, which is their biggest investment outside of Moscow.
