GRAZ, April 1, 2017 - Floorball 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 tobe faster than the Swedes on this one,” saysJesper Hviid, one of the three Danish guys that goes by the nickname ”TheDanish Floorball Mafia”.
”It has gone soquick. People have seen the rise of floorball has gone from 0 to 100 in thelast six-seven years. From nowhere to become the largest discipline of all, asin these Winter Games.”
Jonas Hviidexplained to AIPS how they got the humorous nickname from Special OlympicsEuroasia’s Sports Director Mariusz Damentko, because of the marvelous rise.Four years ago in South Korea floorball was only a demonstration sport withjust eight teams - in Austria in 2017 they were 42 teams, even surpassing theresembling sport of Floor Hockey.
”In Korea therewas 70 Floor Hockey teams. Now we have 42 and Floor Hockey has 40. So it isquite easy to see what is happening. Floor Hockey needs a full pitch of hardsurface to make the puck slide, whereas floorball can be played on grass ochdirt in Nigeria. It is a much closer step for many countries to take,” he said.
It has not beeneasy though for them to find the support of Floorball as a discipline ofSpecial Olympics. Most of the resistance have come from the competitionmanagement of Floor Hockey, who feared that the sports would knock each otherout. But through IFF, the International Floorball Federation, they quickly gotan application in store for becoming part of Special Olympics and then, it allwent smoothly.
_F2_
”We have beenspeaking to the right persons, who have pushed on. We have been able to speakto some key people - among them Åse Thorheim, second highest in rank of SpecialOlympics International and Norweigan. She is on our side, and has been a bighelp,” Jonas said.
”From thebeginning Jesper had a really good network in Special Olympics, because he hasbeen Sports Director of Denmark for 10 years. Steen had good connections insidethe official sports federations, and I was still a player. It was a very goodmix.”
Steen Houmann isthe third member of the ’Floorball Mafia’, and has maybe been even moreimportant than father and son Hviid when it comes to promote the sport.
”I held afloorball seminar at the last Winter Games. It was about both Floorball andFloor Hockey, so we wanted to show the differences.”
”But we neverspoke negatively about Floor Hockey. The participants of the seminar playedFloor Hockey. But for example the German coach who was here this year also tookpart in the seminar - and saw the potential of Floorball”, Steen Houmann says.
One of thereasons that Floorball got to be a sport in the Special Olympics was because itrequires relatively little to arrange and the costs are smaller than in FloorHockey. Otherwise they would probably not have gotten the chance as the sportsare very similar to each other.
”For the SpecialOlympics they fly 16 American floor hockey referees to the Games. We onlyneeded to contact the Austrian Floorball Association and they provided us withthe referees we needed”, Jesper gave an example.
The next timethey hope that the Floorball tournament will be even bigger.
”Actually we haveheard from many countries, who used to play Floor Hockey but have watched theFloorball tournament this year in Austria, that they will come with a Floorballteam instead. That’s what we are hoping for, so that the sport can spread evenmore across the world,” he added.
Follow Caroline on Twitter @CaroTranberg
The Young Reporters Programme has been made possible thanks to the support of the European Union's Erasmus + programme
