News of the IIHF Ice Hockey World Championship in Minsk and Riga

Renй Fasel said that often the world championship is held in several cities or even countries for reasons of public interest. Several previous championships have shown that in such a way it is easier to draw viewers to ice arenas, although there were some failures. For example, at last year's world championship in Sweden and Finland Stockholm had an extremely low attendance. “In Minsk, we see an extraordinary situation. We have never seen this before. Just a huge number of fans. But this is rather an exception in comparison to other world championships,” said Renй Fasel.

The IIHF President particularly stressed that the IIHF is highly satisfied with the world championship in Minsk. “We are very happy, absolutely love it. I confess that we did not expect such attendance. Minsk will definitely beat the world championship attendance record,” he said.

In his words, several teams, in addition to the Belarusian national team, feel in Minsk at home thanks to a huge support of their fans. These are the teams of Russia, Latvia, Kazakhstan and Slovakia. “Yesterday we saw the game which was attended by over 11,500 people. It is a huge number of people for a preliminary-round game. I would like to express my gratitude to the organizers who have done a tremendous job to prepare for the event,” Renй Fasel said.

He said that this year he was at the Olympic Games in Sochi that were named one of the best and, perhaps, the best Olympics in history. “If the world championship in Minsk continues in the same vein, it will no doubt become one of the best tournaments of the kind. I am happy with everything here: fans, atmosphere, arenas and level of organization, everything,” Renй Fasel noted.