Czech biathlon rush began two years ago during the World Championship in the Vysočina Region. Last season the world's elite passed Nové Město while the biggest event of the season was "only" the European Championship. Hunger for the possibility of seeing domestic stars on their home ground after a year break even increased.
"The interest of the audience is huge. We will now reissue a collection of thousand tickets for every competition day. These are the untapped reservations of travel agencies, whose blocking we canceled today. I am convinced that by the beginning of next week all the tickets in the stadium will be sold out," said at Tuesday's press conference President of the Czech Biathlon Union, Mr. Jiří Hamza. Vysočina Arena will be gathered around with spectators as well as during the World Championship two years ago. The organizers once again expanded the auditorium with a set of mobile stands. The current capacity of the stadium rose to 16,000 spectators. At least another ten thousand fans will fill the space around the race track.
"Before the start of the season we were considering whether to build a mobile stand or not. But we couldn't anticipate, how fast will grow the popularity of biathlon in the Czech Republic! If we have known better, we could build the stands even bigger," said Hamza, who is convinced that Nové Město will beat the current record of this year's World Cup. So far, most viewers were at the last World Cup in Ruhpolding, Germany, where there were about twenty thousand fans.
Jiří Pošvář
