i'm back in almaty. kazakhstan seems to be the same as it was 4 days earlier when i left. except there are these posters bragging about how kaz is hosting the 2011 winter asian games. maybe they were here before, but i didn't notice them until yesterday.
how much is hosting that event something to crow about? i mean, there are a lot of countries in asia, but only a handful could host winter games. russia controls the entire northern tier of the continent. aside from kazakhstan, china could do it, so could japan south korea. north korea could but probably wouldn't want to. uzbekistan could. kyrgyzstan and tajikistan have the climate to pull it off, but not the cash or stability. and that's about it.
oh wait, mongolia. does mongolia even have ski facilities? a quick google says yes, but the slopes aren't big enough for an international winter sport competition.
so by my count that's six countries that could and would plausibly host the asia winter games (russia, kazakhstan, china, japan, south korea and uzbekistan). 2011 will be the seventh asia games. if they did a simple rotation, kazakhstan would have had it already. rather than bragging a better question is what took them so long?
