Track and field

This year all four of our girls have been going to track and Field at the Children's Palace. Usually only Nika is old enough to go to the city track meets but in April all kids had an opportunity to try themselves in a track meet. It wasn’t a big one, just for the kids from their track and field class but still probably about 30 kids participated. They ran in groups according to their age and pretty much everyone won something. All four of our girls placed. Nika took the first place in her age group. Lina ran in the same heat as Nika, and came in third but because she was the only one in her age group, they gave her first place. Sophie and Lexa ran against each other and took first and third respectively. They were all happy.

Stretching before the meet. As always things started 30 minutes late (In Kazakhstan there is no concept of time but it will be a whole other post sometime later)

Nika and Lina running in their heat. The twins ran so fast that I didn't have time to focus my camera on them (of course, they also ran a much shorter distance).

The funny part was during the awards ceremony. For whatever reason they had a television that day. In fact our kids have been on television a couple of times this year. So, they sat up the podium and put some presents on each place. One would think the presents would go to the kids winning the 1^st, 2^nd, and 3^rd places. Nope! They took pictures of the podium with the presents and then promptly took the presents away before the winners stepped on the podium. It was just for the television. Oh well, the kids were happy anyway.

Here is the set up with the presents for the photo only!

Nika took first, and her best friend took second (notice the presents on the left side behind the poster board).

Like I said, Lina was the only one in her age group, so they stuck her with another heat's winner.

And the twins. Sophie was running head to head with the girl who took second place but she wasn't going to let anybody else win, so in the last 3 seconds she stretched her body forward and won by a head.

All the participants. Their coach, Magzhan, is on the left in a blue shirt.

Our crew.