MINSK, May 8 (BelTA) – 2014 IIHF World Championship in Minsk will be the best championship of the 21st century, Chairman of the Belarusian Ice Hockey Federation Vladimir Naumov told BelTA commenting on the decision of the Annual Congress of the International Ice Hockey Federation to make Belarus the venue of the 2014 IIHF World Championship. Seventy-five delegated voted for Belarus, 24 for Hungary, 3 for Latvia and 2 for Ukraine, one delegate abstained.

“We started to work on the bid three years ago. The work was particularly intense in the recent times, it continued non-stop. Some of the Federation representatives spent about 150 days on trips last year. Believe me, it was quite a challenging task. But Belarus has a good reputation in the ice hockey world. When we were preparing the presentation of our bid during international tournaments that were held in our country, Belarus was visited by representatives of about 20 countries. We also held a lot of talks. So when I said on the eve of the Annual Congress that we expected to win taking about 70% of votes, I knew what I was talking about,” Vladimir Naumov said.

“Now our team, a total of 15 people who represented the Federation, is looking forward to having a rest,” he added.

Talking about the most difficult aspect of the work over the presentation, Vladimir Naumov said that it was a visa problem. “Visa was the major advantage of our opponents, as we surpassed them in all the other aspects. But we managed to find a way out. A special letter signed by Belarusian Foreign Minister Sergei Martynov was submitted to the IIHF members that guaranteed a visa-free entrance to Belarus during three weeks in May 2014,” he explained.

Vladimir Naumov admits that there is still much work ahead, but he is convinced that the championship will be a success.