Like interplanetary bodies whose orbits momentarily align, two of the Big Beasts of world sport were to be found for a few hours last Friday within the confines of the same building.
Lord Sebastian Coe had jetted in from Romania which, 30 years earlier, had defied the Soviet-led boycott of the Los Angeles Games where the former Great Britain athlete had retained his Olympic 1500 metre title. Sheikh Ahmad Al-Fahad Al-Sabah was soon to be on his way to Manila for the Asian Football Confederation (AFC)’s 60th anniversary celebrations.
Yet here they were as the sun climbed over the snowbound capital attending the same ceremony and, later, the same media conference, one in the spotlight, the other in the audience.
The venue for this rather noteworthy coming together was not United Nations headquarters in New York, or the nerve-centre of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) on the shores of Lake Geneva. It was not even one of the great sporting temples of the world, in anticipation of some landmark clash of champions. It took place in the marble-clad interior of the Oguzkent Hotel in the obscure Central Asian state of Turkmenistan. And the fact that it happened here notifies us that it will soon be time to get ready for world sport’s coming Asian decade.
Barely two miles up the road from the Oguzkent, a $5 billion sporting complex to compare with London’s Olympic park or Qatar’s Aspire Zone is taking rapid shape. One detail: the many venues on the site (where, at the busiest period, 17,000 workers will be beavering away on behalf of Turkey’s Polimeks) are to be linked by a 5.5 km monorail. Some facilities are already finished and both the velodrome and a 15,000-capacity indoor sports hall, currently set up for basketball, look top-class.
Given that Turkmenistan has yet to win an Olympic medal in its 23 years of independence and currently stands along with Malta and Madagascar in joint 148th place in the FIFA rankings, you might wonder about the wisdom of the investment.
But that, in a way, is the point: sport is now putting down deep roots even in those parts of this vast, populous and economically vibrant continent that we do not yet associate with athletic prowess. As Turkmenistan’s President Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov put it: “Promotion of sports is one of the main policies of our country.”
The immediate purpose of the complex is to host the 2017 Asian Indoor and Martial Arts Games (AIMAG), an event that, while unlikely to generate many headlines in Western Europe or the Americas, may bring as many as 6,000 athletes, including futsal players, to Ashgabat. It is unthinkable, given the calibre of the facilities, that other competitions, no doubt featuring athletes from continents beyond Asia, will not follow.
AIMAG will, indeed, mark the start of a period that will see Asia emerge as the dominant host of sporting mega-events. Already we know that the 2018 and 2020 Olympic and Paralympic Games, the 2019 Rugby World Cup, the 2019 World Athletics Championships and the 2022 FIFA World Cup have all been awarded to Asia. The 2024 Olympics will soon follow. Given the facilities that these events will require to be put in place, they in turn will engender a follow-up wave of world championships and other single-sport competitions.
Figures of the stature of Sheikh Ahmad and Lord Coe, of course, appreciate this. “Welcome to Asia – now to 2022,” Sheikh Ahmad proclaimed in his capacity as President of the Olympic Council of Asia (OCA), looking quite as ebullient as I have seen him.
“This continent has grown to become a sporting superpower,” Lord Coe, freshly-declared International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) Presidential candidate, asserted.
I wonder, though, whether the former middle distance runner’s choice of words will have provided Sheikh Ahmad, who has also been President of the Kuwait Football Association for nearly a quarter of a century, with food for thought during his 7,000 km journey across the continent’s heart to the Philippines.
As event host, yes, there is no doubt, the term “sporting superpower” neatly encapsulates Asia’s newly-acquired status. As Olympic competitor, the continent now punches its weight, accounting for six of the top 20 nations in the London 2012 medals table; these nations won an aggregate 185 medals.
But on the football pitch? Dearie me, things have reached a sorry pass, at least as far as the men’s game is concerned. Twelve years after South Korea set a new benchmark by reaching the semi-finals, the continent’s four representatives at the Brazil 2014 World Cup (one of which was Australia) could not muster a win between them. Even more damningly, this entire vast continent cannot at present lay claim to a single representative in the Top 50 of the FIFA rankings, the top Asian country being Japan perched just above Trinidad and Tobago in 53rd place.
The continent does, for another seven months, provide the women’s world champions (again, Japan); it appears likely to lose this accolade in Canada next summer, however, with Japan rated 6-1 fourth favourite to retain its crown.
Amid the gala celebrations in the Philippines (FIFA ranking 128), therefore, one hopes that at least some time was devoted to discussing how Asia can improve its lamentable recent record in the world’s biggest sport. With rapid progress apparent, both on and off the field of play in so many other areas, after all, the continent’s footballing regression stands out like the towering white and gold Arch of Neutrality that is one of Ashgabat’s most imposing monuments.
David Owen worked for 20 years for the Financial Times in the United States, Canada, France and the UK. He ended his FT career as sports editor after the 2006 World Cup and is now freelancing, including covering the 2008 Beijing Olympics, the 2010 World Cup and London 2012. Owen’s Twitter feed can be accessed at www.twitter.com/dodo938.