Fans fill downtown streets with international presence
| Source: |
Star Tribune (Minneapolis, MN) |
| Date: |
March 31, 1998 |
| Author: |
David Peterson |
Copyright 1998 Star Tribune
Downtown Minneapolis began to feel a bit more international on Monday
as Canadians with maple-leaf flags and Germans with noisemakers began to
fill the streets and the seats of Target Center for the 1998 World
Figure Skating Championships.
"Are there any Canadians here?" Canadian skater Kurt Browning
shouted to more than 1,000 people who had filled a giant tent outside
Target Center to watch him skate an exhibition on a portable rink. There
was a huge shout in response, and Browning deadpanned:
"We're supposed to be timid people, us Canadians, but at the worlds
we get loud and obnoxious."
At the end of his routine, he could not pass by a little girl in a
Canadian beret who stood beside the rink, beseeching him to autograph a
program. Madison Stewart, 5, had spent nine hours on the road from
Winnipeg.
Across the street in the Target Center, the crowd watching
qualifying rounds for the competition exploded in gratitude to Michelle
Kwan, the Olympic silver medalist who stuck with her commitment to come
to the world championships.
Kwan's entry onto the ice to warm up was greeted with loud
appreciation, as was every jump she made. The announcement of her name
drew a thundercrack from the crowd, and her program ended with a
standing ovation.
Monday's headline event was the opening of the portable ice rink,
which, fittingly enough in the El Nin o winter of 1998, was set up by a
guy whose specialty is making ice rinks that can stand up to the desert
heat of Las Vegas and to a 120-degree day on the beach at Santa Cruz.
The iceman who created it arrived last week and already is gone. His
name is Brian Klavano; he is production manager for Willy Bietak
Productions.
To make an outdoor ice rink takes about 100 aluminum tanks, each
containing a brine solution that supercools the aluminum so that the
water above it will freeze as it is poured on. Workers pour a layer of
ice about three-fourths inch thick, then apply the logos of the
sponsors, and then add another 1 inches of water that slowly turns to
ice.
Then the fun really begins, Klavano said: trying to keep the ice
from getting too hard or too slushy as temperatures change.
Does Klavano cringe when skaters rip up his precious sheet of ice?
"Not at all. That's what it's there for," he said. "In fact, we try
to soften it a bit so they can."
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