The third World Championship took place in Norway from 14th to 21st May 2000. The towns of Drammen and Sarpsborg hosted the group stage, whereas the play-off matches were played in Oslo. The Swedes recorded their first golden hat-trick at this tournament, winning all their matches along the way. The Czechs failed to reach the play-offs for the second straight time.
Group A was dominated by the defending champions from Sweden. The battle for the second qualifying spot into the semifinals followed the exact same scenario like two years before. Norway again drew with Denmark and ended third due to their worse score.
In Group B, the Czechs sensationally drew with Finland 2-2. Before, they defeated Russia 5-1 and lost to Switzerland 2-3 in a very close match. Not even these good results and performances helped them reach the semifinals. Finland advanced from the first position, accompanied by Switzerland from the second.
The Czech Republic, therefore, again faced Norway in a 5th place game. Unfortunately, no vendetta took place and the Czechs didn’t succeed. The Norwegians won clearly 5-2 and consigned the Czechs to the 6th place.
The semifinals featured the same teams as two years ago, only swapped in the pairings. Sweden faced Switzerland, but didn’t let anyone thwart their plans to defend the World Championship title. They didn’t leave anything to chance in the match, thrashing their opponents 8-2.
The other semifinal featured Finland and Denmark. There were no doubts about the match favorite and no surprise happened here either. The Danes scored only once while conceding six times themselves and so Finland joined Sweden in the final pairing, which later became a rather traditional one.
Switzerland beat Denmark 4-2 in the 3rd place game. Following the silver medals from the previous championship they took bronze this time. They indeed started their journey through the World Championships in high style. To compare, the Czech team ended once on the 4th position and twice on the 6th position during the same period.
The final match between the defending champions from Sweden and their challengers from Finland was extremely tight with interesting score progress. Finland went into the lead, but their rivals later turned the score around to make it 4-1. The blue-and-whites managed to close the gap to one goal but the Swedes confirmed their 5-3 victory with a last-minute goal, recording their first golden hat-trick.
The Czechs could see a
small comfort for their disappointment in Radim Cepek’s very good final
standing in the individual statistics – he fought his way up to the 9th place
in the huge competition of Scandinavian floorball stars, just two points short
of the winning trio – Karppanen (Finland), Olofsson, and Hellgard (both
Sweden).
WFC 2018 Team Presentations - Group C – 26.11.2018
History: WFC 2002 - Czechs Narrowly Miss Bronze Medals – 25.11.2018
History: WFC 2000 - No Success for Norwegians at Home – 23.11.2018
WFC 2018 Team Presentations - Group B – 23.11.2018
WFC 2018 Team presentations - Group A – 22.11.2018
WFC 2018 Referee Presentations – 21.11.2018
Analysis: Introducing PDO chart – 20.11.2018
History: WFC 1998 - A Shock by Switzerland – 19.11.2018
History: WFC 1996 - The Birth of Swedish Domination – 16.11.2018
International coaching conference to take place in Prague – 10.11.2018
WFC games data tracking with possession-based approach! – 6.11.2018
Behind The Scenes Tour – 5.11.2018
Check the latest version of game schedule – 26.10.2018
WFC 2018: Lower floor sold out for certain game days! – 23.10.2018
SUMMARY: WFC? What the floorball! Exploring Prague with Luke – 22.10.2018
WFC 2018 Mobile App launched – 17.10.2018
Analysis: Does winning matter to you? So does for data analysts. – 16.10.2018
The final pre-sale is here! – 9.10.2018
The last wave of WFC tickets coming – 2.10.2018
World Championship Schedule Update – 21.9.2018