There might be a new gymnastics center built in Astana, Kazakhstan, named after Nellie Kim.
Sports.kz reports that the local gymnastics community enlisted a parliament member, Olympic champion Olga Shishigina, to lobby for a new training facility for artistic gymnastics. At the moment, Astana, Kazakhstan’s capital, has only one gym with old equipment, so that the local athletes have to travel frequently to other cities and countries to be able to train in proper conditions. Other gyms in Kazakhstan aren’t much better.
Gymnastics is on the rise in Kazakhstan with the team placing 5th at the recent Asian Championships and new senior Milad Karimi placing 5th as well in the all-around. Karimi also took silver on floor at the 2017 Doha World Cup. However, without decent training facilities, with the current gyms built during the USSR, the program won’t have a future.
Shishigina and a number of other politicians are asking the prime minister to approve building a modern training facility in Astana. Nellie Kim, after whom the center would be named, started her gymnastics career in Shymkent and lived in Kazakhstan until 1977.
So Nelli Kim was from Kazakhstan, not Russia?1