Nokian Gets Behind Snow Soccer

Nokian Tyres’ dedication to grip in the snow goes beyond its tyre products, as was witnessed at the Nokian Tyres Snow Soccer World Championships in Finland on 6 – 7 February 2010. The sporting event, which Nokian describes as “very crazy, but so cheerful”, involves 1,000 players and 70 teams competing on a playing surface covered by 50 centimetres of snow. This new snow sport, adds the Finnish tyre maker, is extreme fun: exhausting, difficult and adventurous, and the players with the most grip and skill will prove to be the winners.

The Finns like to play hard in harsh conditions, and Nokian said this attitude can also be observed in the nation’s corporate entities.  The main partner of the Snow Soccer World Championships tests its tyres in the most extreme conditions on snow and ice in its own testing centre 300 kilometres north of the polar circle with over 700 hectares. Testing centre is located in the town of Ivalo in Finnish Lapland, 300 kilometres north of the Arctic Circle. Temperatures fall to minus 40 degrees over there.

“In the challenging conditions of the North we develop and manufacture safe tyres, which provide firmer snow grip und stronger contact on ice to stop early enough while braking and to prevent skidding of the car. Mastery of northern conditions can be both seen and felt in every Nokian tyre,” explains Antti-Jussi Tähtinen, Nokian Tyres’ vice president of Marketing and Communications. “Like the “Hakkapeliitta“ – the strong fighting cavalrymen from Finland in the Thirty Years’ War – the players get through the hardest demands. Like you come through with our premium tyres even in extreme situations. We want to help people have adventures in a safe and cheerful manner. This is why we support the snow soccer world championships.”

Snow soccer, as you may imagine, demands much more power than normal football. “The leg muscles are trained well by the soft ground and the tendons are not put too much under stress,” notes Dr Harri Hakkarainen, director of the Finnish Sport Institute Vierumäki. Furthermore, the rules differ from those played in the standard game. There is no offside rule, and when taking a penalty the player drops the ball from his hands to his foot, as he does for corners and throw-ins. No restrictions are placed upon the number of substitutions or substitutes. Each team has only six players, and match times are two halves of eight minutes each. Matches also take place in temperatures reaching  20 degrees Celsius below zero.