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The Danish Floorball Mafia – 28.04.2017Floorball may hold much of its popularity in Sweden and Finland – but it required three Danes to take the sport to Special Olympics.
- It feels good to be faster than the Swedes on this one, says Jesper Hviid, one of the three Danish guys that goes by the nickname ”The Danish Floorball Mafia”. Jonas Hviid explained to AIPS how they got the humorous nickname from Special Olympics Euroasia’s Sports Director Mariusz Damentko, because of the marvelous rise. Four years ago in South Korea, floorball was only a demonstration sport with just eight teams - in Austria in 2017 they were 42 teams, even surpassing the resembling sport of Floor Hockey. It has not been easy though for them to find the support of Floorball as a discipline of Special Olympics. Most of the resistance have come from the competition management of Floor Hockey, who feared that the sports would knock each other out. But through IFF, the International Floorball Federation, they quickly got an application in store for becoming a part of the Special Olympics and then, it all went smoothly.
- We have been speaking to the right persons, who have pushed on. We have been able to speak to some key people - among them Åse Thorheim, second highest in rank of Special Olympics International and Norwegian. She is on our side, and has been a big help, Jonas said. Steen Houmann is the third member of the ’Floorball Mafia’, and has maybe been even more important than father and son Hviid when it comes to promote the sport. One of the reasons that Floorball got to be a sport in the Special Olympics was because it requires relatively little to arrange and the costs are smaller than in Floor Hockey. Otherwise they would probably not have gotten the chance as the sports are very similar to each other. The next time they hope that the Floorball tournament will be even bigger. Text by Jakob Romeborn and Caroline Tranberg, AIPS Young Reporters. Read the original article here: |
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