MINSK, November 19 (RIA Novosti) – Belarus, which will host the 2014 Ice Hockey World Championship, has in a move aimed at generating some buzz ahead of the competition announced it will enlist the services of a giant crab to predict winners in the tournament.
Sports ministry spokesman Vladimir Nesterovich said Tuesday that the crab, called Petrovich, was caught off the coast of Norway and travelled to Murmansk and Moscow in Russia before reaching his current home at an oceanography center in the Belarusian capital, Minsk.
The gimmick is reminiscent of another marine soothsayer, Paul the Octopus, who secured international celebrity by predicting the results of football matches at the 2010 World Cup in Germany.
Nesterovich said the crab would raise the profile of the competition and attract foreign guests to Belarus.
“We have devised a special program. Even an aquarium will be made in the style of a hockey arena,” he said.
Nesterovich declined, however, to reveal by which method Petrovich would be predicting the outcome of games.
Residents of the Minsk oceanography center have some form in the foretelling department.
Afonka the Octopus, for example, correctly predicted the winner of the Junior Eurovision singing contest in Belarus in 2010.
