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2006 IIHF World Championship
The 2006 IIHF World Championship was held in between 5–21 May 2006 in Riga, Latvia. It was the 70th annual event, and was run by the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF). One of the requirements of the IIHF for Latvia to host the event was that a new arena would be constructed. Sweden was the stand-by organizer in case the arena was delayed, but the construction was completed on schedule, marking the first time a former Soviet state apart from Russia has hosted the event. The mascot of the championships was a beaver called RIX (after Riga International Airport's IATA code.) Sweden shut out the Czech Republic 4-0 in the Gold Medal Game to win the IIHF World Championships. Sweden had won the 2006 Winter Olympic Men's Ice Hockey Gold 3-2 versus Finland in Turin, Italy two months earlier. They therefore became the first hockey team to win both the Winter Olympics and the IIHF World Championships in the same year. Venues Nations The following 16 nations qualified for ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga
Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga (; born 1 December 1937) is a Latvian politician who served as the sixth president of Latvia from 1999 to 2007. She is the first and to date only woman to hold the post and the most recent to be re-elected for a second term. Freiberga is a professor and interdisciplinary scholar, having published eleven books and numerous articles, essays and book chapters in addition to her extensive speaking engagements. As President of the Republic of Latvia 1999–2007, she was instrumental in achieving membership in the European Union and NATO for her country. She is active in international politics, was named Special Envoy to the Secretary General on United Nations reform and was official candidate for UN Secretary General in 2006. She remains active in the international arena and continues to speak in defense of liberty, equality and social justice, and for the need of Europe to acknowledge the whole of its history. She is a well-known pro-European, as such, in Dece ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ice Hockey World Championships
The Ice Hockey World Championships are an annual international men's ice hockey tournament organized by the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF), first officially held at the 1920 Summer Olympics. The IIHF was created in 1908 while the Ice Hockey European Championships, European Championships, the precursor to the World Championships, were first held in 1910. The Ice hockey at the Olympic Games, tournament held at the 1920 Summer Olympics is recognized as the first Ice Hockey World Championship. From 1920 to 1968, the Olympic hockey tournament was also considered the World Championship for that year. The first World Championship that was held as an individual event was in 1930 World Ice Hockey Championships, 1930 in which twelve nations participated. In 1931 World Ice Hockey Championships, 1931, ten teams played a series of Round-robin tournament, round-robin format qualifying rounds to determine which nations participated in the medal round. Medals were awarded based on ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Relegation Round
Promotion and relegation is used by sports leagues as a process where teams can move up and down among divisions in a league system, based on their performance over a season. Leagues that use promotion and relegation systems are sometimes called open leagues. In a system of promotion and relegation, the best-ranked team(s) in a lower division are ''promoted'' to a higher division for the next season, and the worst-ranked team(s) in the higher division are ''relegated'' to the lower division for the next season. During the season, teams that are high enough in the league table that they would qualify for promotion are sometimes said to be in the ''promotion zone'', and those at the bottom are in the ''relegation zone'' (colloquially the ''drop zone'' or ''facing the drop''). These can also involve being in zones where promotion and relegation is not automatic but subject to a playoff, such as in the EFL Championship where teams 3rd to 6th enter a playoff for promotion to the P ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Qualifying Round
Qualification may refer to: Processes * Qualifications-Based Selection (QBS), a competitive contract procurement process established by the United States Congress * Process qualification, ensures that manufacturing and production processes can consistently meet standards during commercial production * Qualification principle, in programming language theory, the statement that syntactic classes may admit local definitions * Pre-qualification (lending), a process by which a lending institution estimates how much it is willing to lend to a borrower Credentials * Professional qualification, attributes developed by obtaining academic degrees or through professional experience * Qualification badge, a decoration of People's Liberation Army Type 07 indicating military rank or length of service * Qualifications for professional social work, professional degrees in social work in various nations * Qualification types in the United Kingdom, various levels of academic, vocational or skil ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Round-robin Tournament
A round-robin tournament or all-play-all tournament is a competition format in which each contestant meets every other participant, usually in turn.''Webster's Third New International Dictionary of the English Language, Unabridged'' (1971, G. & C. Merriam Co), p.1980. A round-robin contrasts with an elimination tournament, wherein participants are eliminated after a certain number of wins or losses. Terminology The term ''round-robin'' is derived from the French term ('ribbon'). Over time, the term became idiomized to ''robin''. In a ''single round-robin'' schedule, each participant plays every other participant once. If each participant plays all others twice, this is frequently called a ''double round-robin''. The term is rarely used when all participants play one another more than twice, and is never used when one participant plays others an unequal number of times, as is the case in almost all of the major North American professional sports leagues. In the United Kingdom, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
2005 IIHF World Championship Division I
The 2005 IIHF World Championship Division I was an international ice hockey tournament run by the International Ice Hockey Federation. The tournament was contested from April 17 to April 23, 2005. Participants in this tournament were separated into two separate tournament groups. The Group A tournament was contested in Debrecen, Hungary. Group B's games were played in Eindhoven, Netherlands. Norway and Italy finished atop of Group A and Group B respectively, gaining promotion to the Championship Division for 2006. While China finished last in Group A and Romania last in Group B and were relegated to Division II for 2006. Participants Group A Group B Group A tournament Standings Fixtures All times local. Scoring leaders List shows the top ten skaters sorted by points, then goals. Leading goaltenders Only the top five goaltenders, based on save percentage, who have played 40% of their team's minutes are included in this list. Group B tournament Standing ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Skonto Hall
Skonto Hall (also known as Skonto Arena) is an arena in Riga, Latvia. In the lobby of Skonto there are conference halls, a gym, and an arena with an Artificial turf, artificial football field, which also hosts numerous exhibitions and concerts. The multi-purpose hall was originally built in 1996 and can accommodate either 2,000 seated spectators or 8,000 standing spectators. It is immediately adjacent to Skonto Stadium. History Skonto Hall was renovated in early 2006, for its use as one of the venues for the 2006 Men's World Ice Hockey Championships alongside the newly built Arēna Rīga. The hall also hosted the Eurovision Song Contest 2003, with a maximum capacity of 6,500. After the World Ice Hockey Championships, the arena was the home of Riga basketball club BK Skonto Riga, but it is also used as a conference and congress center. Due to outstanding loan payments, the hall was taken over by asset management company Reverta in 2011. On 15 October 2013, an auction which inclu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Arena Riga
Xiaomi Arena, formerly known as Arena Riga () is an indoor arena in Riga, Latvia. It is primarily used for ice hockey, basketball and concerts. Arena Riga holds a maximum of 14,500 and was opened on 15 February 2006. It was built to be used as one of the venues for the 2006 IIHF World Championship, the other being Skonto Arena. The arena was designed by the Canadian company Stadium Consultants International ( SCI Architects) and Latvian firms SIA Merks and SIA Nams. In 2025, as part of a partnership agreement between Arena Riga's management and Chinese electronics company Xiaomi, the arena was rebranded as the Xiaomi Arena as part of a naming rights deal. The owner of the arena is the company ''Glesum Investments'', but the real beneficiary is businessman Juris Savickis. History The 11,000-seat arena was constructed as a requirement for hosting the 2006 IIHF World Championship. Its construction overseen by Latvian Ice Hockey Federation president Kirovs Lipmans was dela ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ice Hockey At The Winter Olympics
Ice hockey tournaments have been staged at the Olympic Games since 1920. The men's tournament was introduced at the 1920 Summer Olympics and was transferred permanently to the Winter Olympic Games program in 1924, in France. The women's tournament was first held at the 1998 Winter Olympics. The Olympic Games were originally intended for amateur athletes. However, the advent of the state-sponsored "full-time amateur athlete" of the Eastern Bloc countries further eroded the ideology of the pure amateur, as it put the self-financed amateurs of the Western countries at a disadvantage. The Soviet Union entered teams of athletes who were all nominally students, soldiers, or working in a profession, but many of whom were in reality paid by the state to train on a full-time basis. In 1986, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) voted to allow professional athletes to compete in the Olympic Games starting in 1988. The National Hockey League (NHL) was initially reluctant to allow its p ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Italy
Italy, officially the Italian Republic, is a country in Southern Europe, Southern and Western Europe, Western Europe. It consists of Italian Peninsula, a peninsula that extends into the Mediterranean Sea, with the Alps on its northern land border, as well as List of islands of Italy, nearly 800 islands, notably Sicily and Sardinia. Italy shares land borders with France to the west; Switzerland and Austria to the north; Slovenia to the east; and the two enclaves of Vatican City and San Marino. It is the List of European countries by area, tenth-largest country in Europe by area, covering , and the third-most populous member state of the European Union, with nearly 59 million inhabitants. Italy's capital and List of cities in Italy, largest city is Rome; other major cities include Milan, Naples, Turin, Palermo, Bologna, Florence, Genoa, and Venice. The history of Italy goes back to numerous List of ancient peoples of Italy, Italic peoples—notably including the ancient Romans, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Turin
Turin ( , ; ; , then ) is a city and an important business and cultural centre in northern Italy. It is the capital city of Piedmont and of the Metropolitan City of Turin, and was the first Italian capital from 1861 to 1865. The city is mainly on the western bank of the Po (river), River Po, below its Susa Valley, and is surrounded by the western Alpine arch and Superga hill. The population of the city proper is 856,745 as of 2025, while the population of the urban area is estimated by Eurostat to be 1.7 million inhabitants. The Turin metropolitan area is estimated by the OECD to have a population of 2.2 million. The city was historically a major European political centre. From 1563, it was the capital of the Duchy of Savoy, then of the Kingdom of Sardinia (1720–1861), Kingdom of Sardinia ruled by the House of Savoy, and the first capital of the Kingdom of Italy from 1861 to 1865. Turin is sometimes called "the cradle of Italian liberty" for having been the politi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
