26th Winter Universiade Trentino closes

FISU President passes the FISU flag to delegates of the Granada OC

TRENTINO – Today, 21 December, the curtain fell on the 26^th edition of the Winter Universiade. Traditionally, the games ended with the Closing Ceremony after the men’s ice hockey final which was played in the Gianmarco Scola Ice Arena in Alba di Canazei, a picturesque mountain village in the Dolomites. It was the celebration of the conclusion of a successful event resulting from one-year-long intense work: a true organization miracle, since Trentino stepped in to replace original candidate Maribor.

Trentino 2013 can lay claim to being the biggest Winter Universiade in history in terms of numbers of participants – a record of 2,667 (1035 male & 663 female athletes, 739 male & 230 female officials of 50 countries). The geographical spread of the 10 venues across the Autonomous Province of Trento dispersed in both a mountain and a valley cluster immersed the whole region in the Universiade. With athletes spread across 85 hotels and various sports clusters taking place across the five regions of Trento, these pockets of students have had the chance to form stronger bonds with those from other nations, even with those they were competing against.

OC President Sergio Anesi extinguishes the Universiade Flame

The record breaking went further than only the number of participants. Eight Universiade Records were broken in short track, while no less than thirteen in speed skating. 54 athletes took more than one medal home to put on their mantelpiece. Russia took home most of the medals, leading the medal table followed by Poland and Korea with host country Italy in sixth place.

As the request for high-quality TV coverage of FISU events from its worldwide media partners increases, FISU has decided to step forward and take full control over the TV content produced. Therefore, FISU entrusted its contractual partner – company “Alter Rights & Marketing” with the role of the host broadcaster of the Winter Universiade Trentino 2013. This huge task was delivered with presence of 7 OB Vans and more than 250 technical personnel including directors, cameramen, vision and audio mixers, etc, with final outcome of more than 200 produced hours from almost all Competitions of this event.

Cultural Programme Granada 2015

On the signal distribution side, FISU TV rightholding partner list starts with FISU longtime media partner – pan-European giant Eurosport, which broadcasted more than 70 hours of this event’s live content on all available platforms. Russian channel RTR took 50 and Kazakhstan national TV station KAZsport Channel another 70 hours of this live coverage to present to their viewers. On the other side of the Atlantic, CBS Sports broadcasted 30 hours of this winter games and FISU media partners in Asia – CCTV China and KBS Sport Korea conclude the list of takers.

In Italy, RaiSport covered 75 hours live and featured the event also in the different newscasts. On local level, Rai Trento Region has created a special 15-minute evening newscast directed by Paolo Pardini. From Monte Bondone, a Talk Show curated by Sergio Pezzola was produced. Overall, 350,000 emails were sent out to different media outlets worldwide. Every day, the FISU broadcast branch realized two highlight transmissions of 26 minutes each. These were used by dozens of broadcasters in Italy and abroad. On top of that the majority of the events were livestreamed on as well. There were 500 accredited media personnel present in Trentino. The games website had 260,000 visits with more than a million of page visits.

Regarding the team sports, women’s ice hockey gold went to Canada, a three-peat, for the Canadian women, with silver and bronze going to Russia and USA respectively. The men’s hockey gold was also won by Canada after thriller of a game vs. Kazakhstan. Bronze went to Russia which beat USA. Men’s curling saw Sweden taking the gold leaving silver and bronze to Great Britain and Canada respectively. The women curlers from Russia took the gold while silver and bronze went to Korea and Switzerland.

In his closing speech, FISU President Gallien lauded the Organiser, volunteers and participant. “Dear friends from Trento, Tesero, Baselga di Pine, Cavalezze, Predazzo, Monte Bondone, Pozza di Fassa, Passo San Pellegrino, Canazei, Pergine Valsugana you opened your heart to the youth of the entire world and to the FISU Family, be sure that we will never forget you!”, FISU President Gallien said. “You, We? I feel that now like changing the ‘You’ of the Opening Ceremony to the ‘We’. We all have been working very hard to take up the challenge and build up a great event: We, the student-athletes, coaches, judges and referees, technicians, volunteers… We trained, and trained, and trained to be ready, and finally We did it… each of us at our best, in our own way, but together. We, the Organizing Committee, the CUSI, the FISU Family, with full support from the Academic and Political authorities… We managed to optimize a very tight preparation schedule in the fields of high-level sport, great hospitality and higher education. We competed and challenged ourselves with – we can say – quite good results.”

At the end of the Closing Ceremony the FISU flag passed hands. From the Trentino OC to the FISU President who delivered it to the Granada OC that will host the games in 2015. The ceremony ended with a cultural performance of the new hosts.

C. Pierre, FISU Press Officer