Mikhail Zakharau: Belarus Should Have Twice More Ice Palaces

Lukashenka’s “hockey friend” thinks that the authorities should spend more money on new ice hockey grounds.

To change the Belarusian hockey for the better, it is necessary to fully change its system, starting from the functioning of children’s schools, coach of “Yunost” Minsk Mikhail Zaharau is convinced. In his opinion, only one hockey school in Minsk works properly at the moment – the one of “Dynama” Minsk, belsat.eu writes.

“As for the development of hockey in the regions, there’s a lot of work there, in the first place, for the board of the Ice Hockey Federation,” – Zakharau noted on air on the ONT TV-channel.

The specialist added that ice palaces do not bring proper efficiency, hockey players train only three times a week instead of six, and this results in the absence of new young hockey players - every year we have a maximum of five or six strong players, and abroad this figure is higher by an order of magnitude.

Mikhail Zakharau said that there are 121 hockey players at the age of 20 playing in the elite league of the Swedish championship, and in Belarus there are only six. That's why it is necessary that the schools should work much more seriously, they need to be motivated, it is necessary to monitor the ice rinks, so that they function properly, the local authorities should know what is happening on the ice arenas.

According to Mikhail Zakharau, 32 indoor skating rinks is insufficient for Belarus, 50-60 are needed.

France, for example, has 135 of them, Sweden, Russia have 300-500 each, not to mention the USA and Canada.