Sports
Originally growing as a summer spa town in a distinctly wind sheltered and wide open area, especially since the building of big Hotels from 1877 on, it is nowadays also famous for winter sports (mainly skiing and snowboarding) and is now part of the Weisse Arena resort which combines the formerly separate resorts of Flims, Laax and Falera. It is regular host to international competitions such as the FIS World Championship in skiing and the Burton European Open in snowboarding. In 2004 the resort was featured in the popular Xbox snowboarding video game, Amped 2, and then in 2005 in the sequel Amped 3 on the Xbox 360. Due to the easy access the Weisse Arena cable-cars provide to the mountains, the town has become a popular winter and summer tourist locale.
Today Flims is a year round resort popular not only with winter sports of snowboarding, cross country skiing, downhill skiing and sledding, but also summer sports including hiking, rock climbing, paragliding, mountain biking and swimming in Caumasee, a spring-fed, iridescent-blue-water lake. The area of Conn is a good point of view over the Ruinaulta (Rhine gorge), an impressive rafting and canoeing aera. There are annual figure skating camps run by Viktor Kudriavtsev and Marina Kudriatseva. Skaters who have been regulars at the camps include Swiss national team members Jamal Othman, Sarah Meier, and Stéphane Lambiel, as well as international skaters Evan Lysacek, Gregor Urbas, Karel Zelenka, Kiira Korpi, and Ari-Pekka Nurmenkari.
Read more about this topic: Flims
Famous quotes containing the word sports:
“Guys do not have a genetic blueprint that allows them to understand or love sports.”
—Lesley Visser, U.S. sports reporter and announcer. As quoted in Sports Illustrated, p. 82 (June 17, 1991)
“Short of a wholesale reform of college athletics—a complete breakdown of the whole system that is now focused on money and power—the women’s programs are just as doomed as the men’s are to move further and further away from the academic mission of their colleges.... We have to decide if that’s the kind of success for women’s sports that we want.”
—Christine H. B. Grant, U.S. university athletic director. As quoted in the Chronicle of Higher Education, p. A42 (May 12, 1993)
“It is usual for a Man who loves Country Sports to preserve the Game in his own Grounds, and divert himself upon those that belong to his Neighbour.”
—Joseph Addison (1672–1719)