These days, the Turkmenistan national ice hockey team is intensifying preparations for the 2020 IIHF World Championship Division III, which is scheduled for April in Luxembourg. The team is composed of the players of HC Galkan, as well as HC Oguzkhan, HC Shir and HC Watanchy.
Turkmen hockey players will play in Group A, where their rivals will be the national teams of Luxembourg, DPR Korea, Turkey, Taiwan and the UAE. It is necessary to take the first place in the group, since only it guarantees access to the Division II. Recall that last year, during the debut at 2019 IIHF World Championship Division III in Bulgaria, the team of Turkmenistan won small bronze medals.
This time, the mood of our compatriots is much more serious and decisive, since they have been preparing for the competitions in Luxembourg for six months now, by one of the most famous hockey players in the past, two-time world and European champion, silver medalist of the 1998 Winter Olympics, and two-time winner of the most prestigious The Stanley Cup is part of the American teams New York Rangers (1994) and New Jersey Devils (2000), and now eminent mentor Sergei Nemchinov. A Russian specialist will arrive in Ashgabat on a ten-day visit on February 17.
This visit will be the fourth, and each time Sergei Nemchinov trains our ice hockey masters according to his individual program, which he develops after each visit. So now, Turkmen hockey players expect something special that will help them better prepare for the IIHF World Championship. In particular, it is planned to organize training camps for the national team in the Winter Sports Complex, located in the Avaza National Tourist Zone. The Caspian sea air, saturated with iodine, as well as swimming in the magnificent pool of the complex and training in the gym will help physically strengthen our athletes, since, let's not forget, hockey is, above all, power and contact sport.
"Such an active development of hockey in our country would not have been possible without the most modern winter sports complexes, which were built on the initiative of President of Turkmenistan Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedov. Therefore, I want to express my deep gratitude to the Leader of the nation from all the hockey players of Turkmenistan, because until relatively recently we could enjoy this fascinating game only on TV. And now we regularly have various national tournaments, cup draws and children's championships. And this, we can say with confidence, is only the beginning", – said the President of the Hockey Federation of Turkmenistan, Jora Hudaiberdiyev, in an interview with the newspaper Neutral Turkmenistan.
