A cultural hub for 1,000 years, the city has spent the decade since its 2005 millennium celebration reinventing itself as the cynosure of Russian sports.

Since 2007, the city has hosted world and European competitions in field hockey, ice hockey, fencing, boxing, bandy and weight lifting. In the years ahead, it will welcome international visitors for a major rhythmic gymnastics event, an extreme sports event modeled after the X Games and two significant soccer tournaments: the 2017 Confederations Cup and the 2018 World Cup.

The soccer matches, including six World Cup qualifying games and a quarterfinal, will be held at the 45,000-seat Kazan Arena, where two temporary pools were constructed for last week’s swimming competition. Before one of her preliminary races, the American Missy Franklin limbered up by dribbling a soccer ball. Meeting with the news media afterward, she explained that she wanted to be able to tell people she had played soccer in a World Cup stadium.

Viktoria Zeynep Gunes, a 17-year-old individual-medley swimmer and breaststroker, spoke another day about her disappointment in not making any finals. The last 14 months have been tumultuous for Gunes, who won a world junior title in 2013 for her native Ukraine. She fled her homeland last year with her family after Russia invaded the Ukrainian territory of Crimea.

They settled in Istanbul, and the world championships were Gunes’s first major competition in which she represented Turkey. Despite the circumstances behind her family’s abrupt relocation, she professed to be happy racing in Russia. She said she enjoyed catching up with her friends from the host country and Ukraine. “There are no problems here,” Gunes said. “This is outside politics.”

To Vladimir Leonov, Tatarstan’s sports minister, an American and native Ukrainian mingling companionably with Russians reflect the power and glory of sports. It is a potent image for Leonov, who was born here. “Kazan, it’s my life, like in the song,” he said, chuckling.