Sabina Altynbekova stole the limelight last summer when she caught the attention of Chinese fans while playing volleyball for Kazakhstan. An Indonesian website, Surbaya News, recently named her as the most beautiful athlete ahead of Tennis superstar Maria Sharapova.
Sabina was playing volleyball at the 17th Asian Junior Women's Volleyball Championship in 2014 when she was noticed by her fans in China. Since then, the 18-year old has been approached to get involved in several fashion projects. However Altynbekova said, she wants to focus more on volleyball, reported Tengrinews.kz
Her popularity status has grown multi-fold since last year when her Instagram hit 492,000 followers. She has recently endorsed Swiss watches and has a personal Gmail account manager to help her with her communication and scheduling.
Foreign clubs have become interested in her to hire her to play volleyball for them. In her recent interview with Astanatimes.com, Sabina also expressed her interest in playing for foreign clubs and improve the quality of her game.
According Globalvoices Online, Sabina has shouldered responsibilities to make people interested in her country and paint a better picture of Kazakhstan to the rest of the world.
She was in the news when Nursultan Nazarbayev who contested for Khazakhastan's presidential post in April this year chose Sabina to be his representative for the presidential campaign. She also promoted five new reforms in the Congress, reported Tengrinews.kz.
Sabina Altynbekova and another Kazakh athlete Denis Ten represented Almaty's bid for 2022 Winter Olympics' Games rivaling Beijing, said Tengrinenews. Almaty lost to Beijing by 44-40 votes.
