Athletistic / Hockey. Today, the 87th World Hockey Championship kicked off in the two Czech cities of Prague and Ostrava. The first two matches have already ended earlier and now we are waiting for the official opening match between the teams of the Czech Republic and Finland, which will take place at the main venue of the tournament – “O2 Arena”.
Athletistic invites you to a live online text broadcast of this event: Hockey, World Cup 2024, Czech Republic – Finland, live online text broadcast.
The Czech team will host the hockey world championship for the third time in modern history. Previously, this happened in 2004 and 2015. In neither of these cases did the home walls help the Czech team win medals at the end of the tournament. At the championship 9 years ago, the team led by Vladimir Ruzicka lost to the American team in the bronze medal match – 0:3.
In total, the Czech national team (since 1993) has 6 gold, 1 silver and 6 bronze medals. They won their first world championship title in 1996, followed by the most successful period in the history of the national team, when they won the world championship three times in a row (1999–2001), and the last victory was achieved in 2010 in Germany. Then the same Ruzicka beat the Russian team – 2:1.
At the last world championship, the Czech team took 4th place in its subgroup after the teams of Switzerland, Canada and Latvia, and in the quarterfinals it again lost to the state team -United and again with a score of 0:3, finally being ranked in 8th place according to the results of the championship.
Their current rivals, the Finnish team, also only managed to advance from the group to the elimination stage a year ago, where the Canadian team was waiting for them. The fight didn’t really work out and “Maple” got a pass to the semi-finals with a score of 4: 1.
As for Suomi’s overall record, she has 4 titles of the strongest team in the world, one of which was won at the “home” tournament in 2022, when Jukka Jalonen’s team defeated Canada in the final , scoring the decisive goal in overtime – 4: 3. The “lions” also became the best in 1995, 2011 and 2019, achieving the status of vice-champion 9 times and winning the bronze medal three times.
Of course, a lot depends on the start of the current championship, so it will be very interesting to watch such a confrontation in the first match. Online live streaming of the meeting will begin at 9:20 p.m. Moscow time.
Source: Sport
I’m Emma Smith, a dedicated journalist and avid storyteller. I have been writing for news websites for the past 5 years, reporting on hockey news and delivering in-depth analysis of the sport. In my current role as Author at Athletistic, I write about hockey events from around the world to keep followers up-to-date with what’s happening in the sport.
