The Beijing Olympics end this Sunday, February 20, at the same time as the winter holidays. An ideal period for the City Glace ice rink in Le Mans. She attracted 6,000 skaters in the last two weeks as well as nearly 200 children for internships. If the Olympic events broadcast on TV did not particularly attract customers, they gave ideas to the team.
“We really exploited the theme“, explains Emmanuel Huet, the co-director of the ice rink. “We organized variants of winter sports disciplines, but on ice. ” Which gives biathlon, but shooting with balls, or cross-country skiing, but in skating version with sticks. “It changes the animations a bit, which is important to us.“
“It’s a bit of models”
“We also educate people on the chances of a medal, which have materialized with the gold medal of the Papadakis/Cizeron duo in ice dancing“, continues former professional skater. Performances also followed by the regulars of the ice rink. “We are inspired a bit by figures, pirouettes, positions that we try to reproduce. It’s a bit of a model“, says Hugh, a fan of figure skating.
“I lived in Annecy during the Albertville Olympics, so since then it has remained anchored in me“, explains Tiphaine, who has recently taken up skating again. In a corner of the room, a group of friends is playing hockey and discussing it just as ardently.”I grew up in Russia, so there we play hockey like here we play football“, specifies Gleb. He will of course follow, by setting an alarm clock at 5 a.m., the final of the olympic hockey tournament this Sunday between the Russian Olympic Committee and Finland. His companions have the same program, there is no bias since France was not even qualified to participate. “It would have the added pleasure, they are not very far from it, we hope it will be for the next Olympiad“, regrets Nicolas.