Turkmenistan President blasts his sports chief
Turkmenistan President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov gave his sports chief a public dressing down yesterday, after the Central Asian country's athletes once more came home empty-handed from the Olympics.
"It's disappointing that, even with all the facilities provided, you could not justify the trust of the nation," Berdymukhamedov told sports committee chief Kaakbay Seiidov in an angry encounter shown on state television.
Oil-rich Turkmenistan, with a population of five million, has never won a single Olympic medal, unlike its four former Soviet neighbours in Central Asia.
At Rio, none of their nine athletes got past the qualification rounds.
The President told the sports chief, whose position is the equivalent to a minister, that he had failed to do all he could "to increase the sporting authority of the fatherland". - AFP.
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