Serik Sapiyev and Ilya Ilyin Join Para Athletes at Astana Half Marathon

The fifth-anniversary Astana Half Marathon took place on 7 June in Astana. Among the participants were Olympic champions Serik Sapiyev and Ilya Ilyin, who joined the inclusive Funduk Team and took to the course as guides, accompanying athletes with disabilities at one of the capital’s largest running events.

As part of the Astana Half Marathon, 10 inclusive Funduk Team crews took part in the race. Each crew consisted of one inclusive athlete and three guides who assisted them throughout the distance. In total, the team united around 40 people.

Famous sportsmen participation was part of a broader initiative aimed at promoting accessible sports and encouraging inclusive participation in mass sporting events. According to the organisers, projects like these help make running culture more open and demonstrate that major racing events can be accessible to people with diverse physical abilities.

“Since 2012, the development of inclusive sports has remained one of the core areas of our Fund’s work. We strive to create conditions in which large sporting events are accessible to people with diverse physical abilities. The participation of Olympic champions as guides helps draw additional attention to the issue of accessible sports and demonstrates that inclusive participation should be an integral part of running culture and mass sporting events,” said Galimzhan Yessenov, Chairman of the Board of Trustees at “Courage to be the First” Corporate Fund.

Funduk Life Corporate Foundation acted as a partner of the project. Its Co-Founder Sergey Kho notes that the Team’s main task is to change how the society understands the inclusive support and to demonstrate that such format is built basing on mutual motivation, support and equal participation.

“Funduk activity is considerably connected with charity. However, we would like to step aside from a traditional perception of help through pity and difficult emotions. We develop the philosophy of a mutual support, where every participant receives appreciation and motivation. One person helps another one to overcome the distance, but at the same time they receive this important emotional experience and start seeing things differently,” clarifies Sergey Kho.

Providing support to the inclusive initiatives is one of the core directions that “Courage to be the First” Corporate Fund fulfils with a view to charity function. More than 30 charity projects amounting to KZT 300M+ have been implemented since 2012. The finances have been transferred to develop sports and rehabilitation infrastructure, to build football pitches, rock-climbing walls, sports grounds, and to purchase special-purpose equipment for exceptional children.

This year the Astana Half Marathon gathered 7,000 people and 243 of them were foreigner-runners from more than 30 countries. The representatives from countries across Asia, Europe, North and South America, Africa, the Middle East, and Oceania toed the starting line.

The Astana Half Marathon takes place supported by Astana City Akimat.

The Astana Half Marathon general partner: Halyk Bank

In addition, registration for the Almaty Marathon is still underway. This is the largest running competition in Central Asia that will take place on 27 September 2026 for its 15^th anniversary time. You can register for the Marathon on the website almaty-marathon.kz.