The official 2004 IIHF World Championship guidebook was baptized by the head coach of the Czech national team Slavomír Lener in the Luxor Books Palace yesterday afternoon.

 

“The guidebook is quality material which contains many photos and a lot of history. I like it very much,“ said Lener. To the question if he can turn profit from it, he asnwered in a Salomon way: “ We´ll see, I haven´t read it yet, I have just had a look into the history.“

 

The one-hundred-pages long guidebook is in Czech as well as in English and was published on March 31st 2004 for the first time. The beginning of the book is dedicated to the tournament rules and to the introduction of the IIHF Council members. The organizers from the Organizing comittee of the Prague´s and Ostrava´s championship are there as well. The next are pages dedicated to the official mascot of the tournament called Tomík, the interview with the head coach Lener and profiles of the each of sixteen teams coming to the championship. The part of  the book is also a quick look into the history, profiles of the SAZKA Arena and the ČEZ Aréna, historical stats and standings.

 

The author of this publication is sports journalists Jaroslav Kirchner. „I have been working as a sports journalists on all championships in last twelve years. I have collected all possible guidebooks and media sheets that helped me much,“ said about the book its author. „The most difficult work was with the history of the championship in 1953 in Switzerland. That year Czech president Gottwald died, state mourning was declared and the Czechoslovakian players had to leave the tournament.  

 

“The Czechoslovaks played three games, two victories and one lost. The statistics were not unified. In one newspaper was written that they were fourth, in the other ones that they were non-qualified. The solution brought great defenceman and nowadays chairman of the CIHA Karel Gut, who verified that the Czechoslovaks really weren´t qualified,“ explained the author. 

 

The title of the publication carries the colours of the Czech national team – blue, white, red. There are three players – Milan Hejduk, Robert Reichel a Jaromír Jágr too. „It was my plan to chose ice-hockey players who are popular and well-known among the whole public, not only to hockey fans,“ says protographer Luboš Lang.

He admitted that he chose pictures to the guidebook from a huge amount. “I like the most the photo on the title. The eyes of the goalie are often covered for the spectators,“ explains Lang the cause why he had chosen that photo.

 

According to the publishers, the work on the guidebook took about two to three weeks, but it was printed in a record time – only in one week-end! „The edition is now 17.000 pieces. During this week it will be distributed in the whole country and it will not be missing in the SAZKA and ČEZ Arenas as well. We plan to print it on,“ says the delegates of the publishing house Fragment. The price is CZK 250.