Short and sweet. The opening ceremony which took place at City Hall was so short that if you blinked you may have missed it all! The speeches went by so fast they almost forgot the oaths! After less than 3 minutes of official delegates speaking, athlete and official oaths were read and then it was time to mingle.
Slightly awkward one must say, but Canada got things rolling with the picture taking which lead to teams chatting and getting to know each other. A variety of photos were taken. Team photos, NRL teammate photos, Canada Winter Games team member photos lead to athletes from various teams at this event to come together. Brief entertainment was also provided. A few athletes even discreetly (given that they were wearing the same outfit as them) found their way into other team’s photos.
Once the event wrapped up, we took a few minutes to walk around the local market that was set up just outside City Hall. The first Monday of every month the vendors set up to sell a variety of items.
Lyndsay convinced a few of us to try the Herring. It was pretty good. Better than I thought it would be. We then loaded up the bus to head back to the hotel. But about a block from our destination we realized we forgot Jane (RC President) at the market! Oops. It is not very far from the hotel so we figured she would find her way back.
Upon arrival in my room I had a message from one of the officials letting us know that Jane was with them and that they would be back soon. I was to let her husband know that that was the case. But as I sat in my room and got an early start on writing this blog I have just realized that I have not conveyed the message to her husband, and we have been back for some time now. Double Oops. Can I still blame these things on jetlag? Even after 8 days here?
Then it was free time for a couple of hours. Laynski and I thought we could get in a little bit of shopping. We are both looking for gifts for people back home, so we thought we’d go with the popular souvenir items. Again we turned to our trusty Google and the first response we got to our search for ‘popular Finnish souvenirs’ was ‘any conceivable part of a reindeer’. We are not really sure how to take this.
3 hours until GAME TIME! Had to make a quick stop at Prima (kind of like Wal Mart, but on steroids). Had to pick up a few things for the team. Turns out buying Tylenol and Advil in a different language is not an easy task! We came back with one of the two... Advil I think.
Contrary to our Finnish communication skills, I must say we are getting pretty good at navigating around in this town. We got to the rink with plenty of time to set (and post more of the emails you have sent to the team).
The second half of the USA-Finland game was starting when we got there. Their new team jerseys looked really good! I’m glad to see they got them in time, last I heard at the opening was that they were still stuck in Tulli! (I was just looking for a way to use that word for real in a sentence)
The final score of that game was 13-0 for Finland.
For full game details you can view the game summary via our stats site.
Now it was time for the Canada-Sweden game. We had the live twitter and stats sites ready to go. I was also able to post a couple videos during and after the game. The first free pass and goal of the game, a half time interview with Jane Casson and post game interviews with Katie Lugg and Jen Hartley.
For full game details you can view the game summary via our stats site.
The live stats and Tweets turned out to be quite difficult at time. As the final score of the game was 30-0 for Canada, we had a lot of goals to enter. At first it wasn’t so bad, but then we started scoring back to back goals that were only 15 seconds apart! I am not complaining, I’m glad our girls can score it just made it tricky to keep you all up to date at times.
Great job to the host on the game presentation! Player introductions, fan interaction, announcers... and I hear they are adding things every day. I can only imagine how awesome it will be on the last day! My only comment would be on the song that plays every time a goal was scored. It’s a great idea, but when it’s the same song every time AND there are 30 goals scored in the game it can get quite repetitive. Mixing it up a little might not be a bad thing.
A quick note on our officials! Natalie Fortin (Limoges, ON) and Kevin Lee (Mississauga, ON) are the Canadian officials at this event. Kevin got the FIN-USA game with Veera Lempiäinen, while Nat got the CAN-SWE game with Katriina Keskitalo. Stephan Blackman (DDO) is the Director of Officials for the event.
Tomorrow’s match ups will feature:
USA vs Sweden @ 3:30pm (Tampere Time)
Finland vs Canada @ 6:30 pm (Tampere Time)* Live stats and Twitter/Facebook updates will be provided for this game.
Finland vs Canada @ 6:30 pm (Tampere Time)* Live stats and Twitter/Facebook updates will be provided for this game.
As usual Photos have been uploaded to Flickr.
Don’t forget to check out our WRC page for more details.
Don’t forget to check out our WRC page for more details.
Be sure to check out the official daily media release.
Play it. Love it. Live it.
-Franski
