"We are very glad that in the next three years St. Petersburg will host European Champions Cup as well as the World Cup in 2007. The Ice Palace in St. Petersburg is one of the best sports arenas in Europe. Moreover, the city has an outstanding audience," the IIHF President said at the meeting.
Ms. Matviyenko said in her turn that St. Petersburg boasted old Ice Hockey traditions. "St. Petersburg's citizens love ice hockey and we will be restoring our traditions. There used to be times when every street had its own practice ground and almost all children played ice hockey," she said.
"We have discussed the possibility of St. Petersburg hosting the European Champions Cup in the course of the next three years starting from January 2005. This is a prestigious tournament, which gathers leading European Ice Hockey teams. On our part we will take every possible effort to hold the tournaments at the high level," Valentina Matviyenko told journalists following her meeting with the IIHF President.
The Ice Palace in St. Petersburg will be hosting the European Champions Cup games in the course of the next three years. The 2005-tournament will be held on January 13-16. The winning teams of the participating European countries will participate in the tournament - Avangard (Russia), Zlin (the Czech republic), Karpat (Finland), XB-71 (Sweden), Dukla (Slovakia) and Frankfurt (Germany).
The teams are divided into two groups, the winner of which will meet in the final game to compete for the main prize of the European Champions Cup. The prize winning money are estimated at 600,000 Swiss Franks in 2005, at 700,000 in 2006 and at 800,000 in 2008.
