Astana Hippodrome

The Astana Hippodrome serves Kazakhstan's new capital city — Nur-Sultan (formerly Astana, Aqmola, and Tselinograd), the planned capital developed since the late 1990s on the Kazakh steppe. The capital relocation project, initiated by President Nursultan Nazarbayev in 1997, created a modern city on the northern Kazakh steppe where the horse racing infrastructure was developed alongside other sporting and cultural institutions as part of the city's nation-building programme. The Astana Hippodrome is a more modern facility than the Almaty track, reflecting the new capital's emphasis on contemporary facilities. It operates on a dirt oval appropriate for the steppe climate — the severe winters of the northern Kazakh steppe (Astana is one of the coldest capital cities in the world) restrict racing to the spring-autumn season (May-October). The track hosts racing as part of the national Kazakhstan Equestrian Federation programme, with Astana's race days drawing the capital city's government, diplomatic, and business community. The Akhal-Teke championship — an exhibition and competitive event celebrating Kazakhstan's most culturally significant horse breed — is a distinctive feature of the Astana race calendar. The Akhal-Teke, bred for thousands of years in the Turkmenistan-Kazakhstan region, is renowned for its metallic sheen, extreme endurance, and heat tolerance — qualities developed for the desert and steppe conditions of Central Asia.