Hockey players from the Kazan club «Ak Bars» arrived in Ashgabat to conduct joint training camps with the national team of Turkmenistan, which has begun the final stage of preparation for the upcoming World Championship in South Africa in the third division of group «A» on the 17th to 23rd of April.
As the chairman of the Hockey Federation of Turkmenistan Jora Hudayberdiyev told the «GA» correspondent, the head of the sports delegation of the Republic of Tatarstan of the Russian Federation is 42-year-old Honoured Master of Sports of Russia, three-time world champion in the Russian national team, the only five-time winner of the Gagarin Cup Danis Zaripov.
The training process is supervised by a 46-year-old highly experienced coach, the champion of Russia in 1998 as part of the Kazan «Ak Bars», the silver medalist of the 1995 World Youth Championship Artyom Anisimov. His assistants are coaches of goalkeepers, defenders and forwards.
On the 7th of the April , on World Health Day, the national team of Turkmenistan will play a friendly match with hockey players from the Kazan club «Ak Bars». The game will take place on the ice arena of the Winter Sports Complex. It is scheduled to start at 4:00 pm.
For Turkmen hockey players, this will be a good opportunity to test their strength in a game with an experienced opponent before the world championship in the third division of group «A», which starts this month in Cape Town.
Five teams will compete for a ticket to the second division of group «B»: Luxembourg, Thailand, Taiwan, Turkmenistan, and South Africa.
The first game of the national team of Turkmenistan will be held on the 17th of the April against the hosts of the championship - the team of South Africa. On the 18th of the April, Bayram Allayarov's wards will play with Luxembourg, on the 20th of the April - with Thailand and will end the tournament on the 23rd of the April with a match with Taiwan.
Remind that Turkmen hockey players are two-time winners of bronze medals of the world championship in the third division of group «A». The last time they achieved this achievement was last year at the World Championships in Luxembourg.
