First ever Winter Youth Olympics have ended

22 Jan 2012 | Dennis Mende

The first ever Winter Youth Olympics in Innsbruck have ended today with gold medal wins for Finland (boys) and Sweden (girls).

The ice hockey competition at the Winter Youth Olympics had been divided into four sections - the team competion for boys and girls and a skills competition for boys and girls where only one player for each country could participate.

Team competition

Both tournaments, the one for the boys and the one for the girls, had five participants each.

In the boys tournament Russia, Canada, Finland and the USA qualified for the playoffs while host Austria had no chance in all four games to end up on the last place without a single point and 3 to 30 goals. In the quarter finals favourites Russia won 5-2 against the USA while Canada lost 1-2 against Finland. The both North American teams met in the bronze medal game where Canada won 7-5. The final was played on Sunday in front of 3.008 spectators in the Tyrolean Ice Arena. Zinovev had brought Russia in front in the ninth minute while Hopponen tied the game in the 44th. The game had to be decided in the shootout where Honkanen and Kapanen scored to give their team the gold medal.

The girls tournament was played by Sweden, Austria, Germany, Kazakhstan and Slovakia. The last two (KAZ and SVK) were the clear underdogs and finished on the last two positions. In the quarter finals Kazakhstan had to play against Sweden and lost by a large margin (0-11). In the other game the two neighbouring countries Austria and Germany met and the hosts went to the finals with a 2-0 win. There it was Sweden which won 3-0 while Germany received the bronze medal after winning against Kazakhstan (7-4).

Skills competition

In the skills competion points were rewarded in the playoff system. The six competitions were the fastest lap, shooting accuracy, skating agility, hardest shot, passing precision and puck Control. The boys competition was won by Augusts Valdis Vasiļonoks from Latvia (22 pts) in front of Attila Kovács from Hungary (21 pts) and Seiya Furukawa from Japan (19 pts). The girls competition was won by Julie Zwarthoed from the Netherlands (22 pts) in front of Fanni Gasparics from Hungary (19 pts) and Sharnita Crompton from Austrlia (17 pts).