World’s first badminton centre in 2013 to open in Kazan

Rustam Minnikhanov and visitors from Moscow attended a ceremony, to lay the first stone in the sports centre. The construction of a Badminton Centre has today begun in Kazan. President of Tatarstan, Rustam Minnikhanov, attended the first stone laying ceremony.

The world’s first Badminton Centre will appear on the Orenburg Highway, near the Tennis Academy. It will be put into operation immediately after the student games in 2013, but will as well become Universiade’s heritage, since the number of people doing the sport in Tatarstan quadrupled after its inclusion in the competition programme.

“We have always loved badminton in this or that way, but we only first seriously began to do it about 3 or 4 years ago,” President of Tatarstan said, opening the ceremony. The sports facility should be delivered in 2014, when Kazan hosts the European badminton championship, he added.

Rustam Minnikhanov was accompanied by a delegation that included Russian Audit Chamber chairman, Sergei Stepashin, Russian deputy sport minister, Pavel Novikov, National Badminton Federation president, Sergei Shakhrai, Tatarstan vice premier, Asgat Safarov, and others.

“I am completely convinced the construction schedule, inscribed here, will be followed,” S. Stepashin said, congratulating the Kazan residents on the remarkable event.

The centre’s design space is 4,940 square metres. It will house 12 twelve-metre-tall playgrounds with 780 seats.

The ceremony’s participants traditionally removed a cloth from a piece of granite carrying a plate, signifying its official laying, to launch the sports centre construction.