In a rare two-city Olympic race between Beijing and Kazakhstan's valley city of Almaty, the Chinese capital might appear to have all the advantages: name recognition, glitz and a geopolitical colossus standing behind the effort. Many Olympics fans would struggle to find Kazakhstan on a map. But the former Soviet republic on the steppe is using its bid for athletic glory to color in the gap between Russia and China in the world's consciousness.
"We have this stereotype: Pakistan, Afghanistan, Kazakhstan — a country somewhere in Asia. It's out there somewhere," said Madi Mambetov, a journalist and commentator in Almaty. He said he had a strategy to contend with the blank looks that sometimes arose when he traveled across the United States and mentioned his home nation, a mineral-rich expanse buffeted by Siberian winds that is five times the size of France but holds a population smaller than Florida's.
"When you point out to people that this is a former Soviet country, it makes them easier to locate it in their minds. So they say, 'Oh, it's Russia, right?'" Mambetov said. His answer: "It's a bit like Russia, but Asian."
He won the $5 bet in San Diego by whipping out his sky-blue passport.
Almaty, which sits in the shadow of the towering Tian Shan Mountains, became a surprise Olympics contender after other potential hosts scattered away from the competition last year. Other countries feared that the quadrennial competitions are about as profitable as a last-place finish in a curling competition. Just Tuesday, Boston dropped out of an effort to capture the 2024 Summer Olympics, leaving the United States without a front-runner for those Games.
Not so for Kazakhstan, whose leaders have less to worry about from public opinion. President Nursultan Nazarbayev claimed a 98 percent win in April presidential elections. Weak political opponents have been imprisoned or exiled. The former steelworker was ruling the republic even before it gained its independence from the Soviet Union in 1991. Since then, he has used oil and gas wealth — and repression — to build an enormous, depopulated country into a stable, multiethnic territory that is the most Western-friendly in its neighborhood.
Now Kazakhstan must persuade the 100 members of the International Olympic Committee to place their trust in a nation that few of them may ever have visited. (Once a nation submits its application, the Olympic voters are barred from dropping by for a tour, under rules imposed after the Salt Lake City corruption scandal in 2002.)
"It's the biggest challenge if you are not Paris or London or New York," said Andrey Kryukov, who has been running Kazakhstan's bid. "You have a very small chance to be well known in the big countries." But he said that conversations with committee members in recent days had given him reason to be optimistic.
Judging by wintry natural beauty alone, Almaty ought to be a shoo-in to become an Olympic host, with blizzardy winters and mountains just a 20-minute drive from the city's center. Organizers brag that the Soviet-era Medeu ice rink, television-ready in its perch amid craggy peaks, is among the most stunning in the world. Just a single Olympic venue needs to be built from scratch in the bid plan, a bargain compared to the 2014 Sochi Olympics' estimated price tag of more than $40 billion.
In China, the alpine events would have to be held up to four hours away from Beijing, and they'd probably need to lean on man-made snow. In an unsubtle jab by Kazakhstan to its Chinese competition, the slogan for the bid is "Keeping it Real," and its video presentations have included many images of waist-deep snowdrifts.
The Olympic shot comes amid a longer-term effort to boost Kazakhstan's global aspirations to be known as a regional powerhouse that does more than just produce energy and uranium.
"We are maybe a poor country with a not-so-big population, but we are interested in having attention from all over the world," said Sultan Akimbekov, the director of Almaty-based Institute for World Economy and Politics, a government-affiliated think tank that advises Kazakhstan's leadership.
But Kazakhstan is also fighting major challenges: the airport in Almaty? Cramped. Hotels? Few and expensive. The city's architecture? Vintage Soviet, with eight-lane car-jammed avenues lined by stubby concrete-block buildings. It can take a hunt to find a postcard or a T-shirt that says "Kazakhstan." And the economy's boom years are over, brought back to earth by the plummeting price of oil.
Kazakhstan's best-known son might be the wildly offensive fictional character of Borat, the anti-Semitic Kazakh TV host who was the invention of British comedian Sacha Baron Cohen. Baron Cohen's 2006 movie infuriated Kazakhstan's leaders, who banned it inside their borders.
"Today our work is aimed at creating a different image. Probably at minimizing the negative image of this movie," said Rashida Shaikenova, the director of the Kazakhstan Tourism Association.
Human rights advocates watching the competition between Kazakhstan and China have declared a pox on both houses, saying that neither nation has a record that merits an Olympic imprimatur. In Kazakhstan, Nazarbayev flexed his muscles in a 2011 crackdown, in which at least 17 striking oil field workers in the western city of Zhanaozen were killed. Credible political opponents are not tolerated. And journalists and activists who criticize the prevailing order find themselves in prison or exile.
"There's long been this gap between the claims that Kazakhstan made and the situation on the ground," said Mihra Rittman, who monitors the country for Human Rights Watch.
Others inside Kazakhstan question whether the bid makes sense on purely practical terms. Amid dwindling economic resources, some want the money directed toward social supports. Environmental activists worry the increased road traffic would overwhelm an already smoggy city. And persistent corruption concerns have been borne out by a series of prosecutions related to construction work done for other major international conclaves held in the country.
For now, the nation is waiting to know whether it will have a chance to soar into global consciousness. One Kazakh athlete said Wednesday that his bronze win for figure skating in the 2014 Sochi Olympics gave him a small taste of how bigger glory could feel.
After that win, Denis Ten told reporters, "many fans of mine, they moved to Kazakhstan for the whole summer to study the language. They wanted to know more about Central Asia."
As if not yet confident that Kazakhstan could believably hold such allure, he ended: "It's actually a true story. I can give you the contacts of my fans."
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Washington Post staff writer Karoun Demirjian in Washington contributed to this report.
