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Semjonovs Olympic Adventure Starts Here
Malmö Redhawks number 52 left his colleagues yesterday to start a great adventure. After the win over Västerås, Alexanders Semjonovs went home to his family in Arboga. From there he will travel to Riga, there in the Latvian capital he will join his Latvian national compatriots before travelling onto the Olympic Games in Turin.
Semjonovs is one of the biggest stars on the Latvian national ice hockey team and it was him that lies behind the Latvians qualification to the Olympics. With five minutes left of the qualifying round Latvia were down 4-2 to Belarus.
"There were many of our supporters left the ground at that stage. But we made the effort, were lucky and ended up winning 5-4. I scored the decisive goal. That was a fantastic experience, and is the high point of my career, at least to this point."
Now there are three days preparations in Riga for the Latvian Olympic Troop.
"It will be great to meet all the guys in the team. We have a young and hungry team, they mostly play with European clubs, only two play in the NHL."
Afterwards the team will fly to Italy on Thursday
"We play a warm up match against the home team Italy on Friday and then later we will take part in the opening ceremony. It is a big thing to be involved in the opening ceremony, it feels inspiring and exciting"
Latvia find themselves in the same group as Sweden, USA, Slovakia, Russia and Kazakhstan. Here are Alexanders thoughts on Latvias chances.
"Anything can happen, but its going to be tough. If we have a good day we can beat a couple of the teams. We plan on going out defensively and try to counter a couple of goals. If we play together as a team things can go well.".
While Alexanders is playing in the Olympics he will possibly miss all of the Redhawks matches in February.
Meanwhile one of the big stars of the Swedish women's team has already landed in Turin. Redhawks and Sweden goalkeeper Kim Martin left for Italy earlier this week. The team will play a warm up game against Switzerland in Lugano before returning in time for the opening ceremony on Friday.
Text: Jenny Henrichson
Translation: John Noonan
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