August 1 - 6, 2005

The 18th World Games in Malmö, Sweden started on Monday August 1 and ended with the finals and closing ceremony on Friday August 5.

On the following pages you will find more information about this event.

• Teams
• Results
• Photos

Monday - August 1

Monday August 1 was the arrival day with the opening ceremony starting at 19:30. The evening started with dinner and a speach by the FIIC president Pierre Filion about the World Games values.

After the dinner it was time for the team drawing.

Six teams were created, you can see the composition of the teams here.

As their first task together, each team was tas tasked to create their own name of the team to be used instead of the boring colour of the T-shirt.

Next they all were put to the test about Swedish celebrities.

Photos of twelwe Swedsih celebrities was presented and the teams was tasked to identify who they were. The result was actually quite good even though some celebrities were more well known than others.

Tuesday - August 2

Tuesday saw the start of the first preliminary games. The match schedule was a preliminary round robin round between the six teams. After the preliminary round the teams on places 3-6 played two quarter finals where the winners were placed in the semi final agains the first and second ranked team from the preliminary round.

Each team was scheduled to play two games on this the first day.

Parallel with the games the FIIC organised a seminar with workshops on both administrative and technical topics.

Tuesday evening was scheduled to be a "Swedish evening".

The teams were introduced to some Swedish traditional student games like; sack racing, tug-of-war, relay with three persons having their legs tied together, five person skiing and finally "Irish christmas".

The evening then ended with a lot of discussions in the bar in the cellar of the hotel.

Wednesday - August 3

Wednesday went on in pretty much the same way as Tuesday.

Two preliminary round matches per team was played.

In the evening, while some participants were occupied with the FIIC annual meeting, the rest were introduced to the ancient Swedish Viking game of "Kubb".

Thursday - August 4

Thursday started off with three preliminary round games followed by a short break and then the two quarter finals between the teams on position 3-6 from the preliminary round.

After the matches a bus took everyone for a sightseeing tour to "Foteviken" which is a viking museum outside Malmö.

On arrival the participants were dressed in Viking clothing before the guided tour commenced.

The guides were very talkative to say the least. They told the story about the battle of Foteviken which was held in the summer of the year 1134.

The participants were also informed about how the Vikings lived their life.

After the guided tour, everyone gathered in "Krog Viking" for a traditional buffé of Swedish food.

Friday - August 5

Friday was the last day of matches.
The day started with the two semi finals followed by a short break for lunch.

After lunch the three positioning matches was played starting with the match for 5th place followed by the match for 3rd place and ending with the final.

In the pause between the second and third quarter of the final game, Nadiia Kotnieva from Ukraine showed a brilliant display in rhythmic sports gymnastics.

The results from the tournament can be found here.

In the evening it was time for the closing ceremony.
Even though it marked the ending of a great week there were many who had awaited this evening as it hosted the fifth "Penguin of the year award" ceremony.

The evening started with some official speeches and continued with dinner.
After dinner, Magnus Gustavsson held a short crash course in Swedish in order for everyone to be able to sing and understand a traditional Swedish drinking song.

Next it was time for the prices. First out was the price ceremony for the team games that had been held in the evenings during the week. The winning team received Swedish candy in the form of salted liquorice.

Then the teams were given their well deserved applause as they were presented starting with the team on 6th place. The winning team calling themselves "Dancing Queens" gathered for their final performance involving a dance to the ABBA song with the same name.

To end the official part of the evening it was finally time for the grand award ceremony of "Penguin Intercrosse"; the 5th Penguin of the year awards. Even though the tournament was held in Sweden, the Swedish king was not able to attend the ceremony of this the "Nobel price of intercrosse".

However, the organisers instead had another ace up their sleeves as the Penguin mascot "Leffe Pils" appeared to present the awards to the well deserving winners.

First out was the "Clumsy Penguin of the year" award.
For the first time an award was presented to a member of the penguin jury.
Tobias Almén received the award without competition...

The second award to be presented was the "Naughty Penguin of the year" which was given to Mario St-Amand from Québec.

The third award was the "Rookie Penguin of the year" which was given to Vyatcheslav Byetskov from Ukraine.

The fourth and final award before the grand price was the "Leffe's choice award" which this year was given to André "Figo" Hüsler from Switzerland.

Before the grand price was presented, the organisers took the time to remeber the past winners of the "Penguin of the year". Three of the previous winners were present in Malmö; Urban Müller, José Guiot and Marcus Henriksson but also the non-present Sylvain Perron got his well deserved applause.

Everyone was very eager to know who won this the fifth award.

For the first time the "Penguin of the year award" was presented to a woman.
Héléne Putod from France was the winner and the participants all agreed that she was a worthy winner.

The evening went on with a lot of dancing and cheering on this the final night of the 2005 World Games in Sweden.