Добрый день, Друзья! Today I'm going to tell you about our local hockey team: Локомотив! On the 13rd of September, I finally assisted to a hockey match for the first time in my life. Our local team, the Локомотив were playing against the Метталург of Магнитогорск (a city in the South West of Russia). I was impressed by the level of athleticism of the players, the complexity of the sport, but especially by the fervour of the fans, the sport culture and I genuinely just enjoyed the adrenaline pick and the level of excitement I experienced when the team scored. (But I have to admit that the best part had to be when the anthem started and all of us stood in unisson. The energy that ran through the room at that moment was just unbelievable.) Since then, I've been to two other matches and I'm already expecting the next match which is taking place in Yaroslavl in a week. Two of the guys in our group fell in love so hard that they bought the expensive jerseys the week following the first match and had all the chanting memorised in no time. One of the things that really struck me is that Lokomotiv is a huge part of Yaroslavl's sport life. Old and young are very proud of the team and if you happen to be wearing any of their goods after a match, it's not unusually for random people to ask you who won, who was playing, etc. This isn't only because Yaroslavl is a strong team which plays in the Kontinental Hockey League (Континентальная хоккейная лига (КХЛ)), the highest level of hockey in Russia, it's also because of a tragedy that hit the club on in 2011. The Lokomotiv club was then travelling to Minsk for the first game of the 2011-2012 KHL season when the airplane that was carrying the team crashed following a botched take-off from Tunoshna Airport. Of the 45 passengers and crew on board, only flight engineer Alexander Sizov survived the crash. People still gather on the 7th of September every year to unite in memory of the late team. A memorial was constructed after the crash and the pictures of the players are displayed inside and outside the arena with an over-head claiming 'наша команда, навсегда...' (Our team, forever...). The other thing that makes hockey interesting is the history of the sport itself in Russia and before that in the USSR. Hockey started to gain importance in the Soviet Union under Stalin. He was the one to appoint Anatoli Tarasov, 'the father of Russian ice hockey', to develop an elite hockey programme. Tarasov looked at hockey in a very different way, focusing more on team play, on combinations, on the precision and the finesse of passing, and his training reflected that. For the team to reach his expectations, the players had to live and train together the whole year long. This led the USSR to dominate hockey in international competitions especially in the 60s and 70s, during which they won 4 straight gold medals in the Olympics. The specificities of Russian hockey faded considerably after the collapse of the Soviet Union, when sport was not as much of a soft power element aimed to prove the superiority of an ideology and a societal model (or at the very least not closely as much as during the Cold War). A documentary was released in 2014 about the Soviet national ice hockey team. You might find it interesting. I hope you enjoyed reading this post!
До свидания и удачи на всё!
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorThird year student at the University of St Andrews, Scotland. Studies Russian, German and International Relations. Loves traveling. Loves languages. Loves to share. Hence, this BLOG! Archives
January 2018
Categories |