“This is a stress test of the fan zone. We are ready for it,” Czech Basketball Federation event manager Jan Toběrný told ČTK. Finns clearly have the highest representation of foreign participants in Prague, ahead of Poles, Serbs, Israelis and Dutch. On Saturday night, they also met the Finnish national team in their own event at the Civic Swimming Pool.
“Finnish fans loved the fan zone and took it by storm. The capacity is about 1,500 people, the biggest rush is from Czech and then Finnish fans. About a thousand people can pass through it every day. It’s hard to estimate, the fan zone is conveniently located between the O2 arena and the exit from the subway. Anyone going to the matches can pass through it,” Toběrný pointed out.
Vít Krejčí tries to put the ball into the Finns’ basket.Picture: Vlastimil VacekThat’s right
Fans can dunk and play on the 3×3 basketball court. There are shooting contests for prizes at the EuroBasket sponsor stand. “For example, Tomáš Satoranský’s jersey. Fans can test how high they can jump. Or they can break the record in the Arcade basketball game. If they break the record, they can shoot 100,000 crowns in the O2 arena during the match. That was the most fascinating thing,” added Toběrný.
Only after the first quarter of the Czech match today, where the Finns equaled the number of Czech fans in the hall and heard a lot, one of the Susijengi scored the first important win.
“I feel amazing, although it’s hard to describe how I feel about being on the board with thousands of people cheering me on. I’ve never really practiced throwing from half, but sometimes during training I try I do them just for fun,” described the unique experience of a successful seventeen-year-old executive who traveled to Prague from the city of Luopioinen in Finland.