| The NC comes to an end |
| After two days of games, the Nations Cup tournament officially ended with the closing and awards ceremony. Players and guests were invited to join in on the festivities at Palazzo Leone da Perego in Legnano in celebration of the tournament and all the participants |
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(05/29/07)
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After an exhilarating final on the courses of Relax Time, the Nations Cup was officially brought to an end at the closing ceremony, which took place in the historic Palazzo Leone da Perego in Legnano. The ceremony, scheduled to start at 8pm was postponed an hour due to all the bad weather experienced throughout the day, weather which caused continual interruptions during the final day of the tournament. However, the competition was brought to a close around 7.30 pm with the proud Swiss on top and all that remained to do was celebrate and recognize the winners at the awards ceremony.
Players and honoured guests found their way to the Palazzo at 9pm, the victors ready to celebrate and all others giving their sincere congratulations to those who proved themselves during the past two days of competition. Among the honoured guests were Canegrate’s sport alderman Roberto Meraviglia, Legnano’s sport alderman Gianbattista Fratus, Relax Time owner Angelo Aghemo and members of his sport association, Italian Minigolf Federation’s president Giuliano Banfi and members of his board, WMF’s sport director Gerhard Zimmermann and members of the board. The ceremony was also attended by various officials coming from some of the 23 townships making up the area of Altomilanese, representatives from the various promoting committees and organizations and of course, all the athletes, coaches and officials who participated in the tournament.
The night started off with the usual speeches from some of the honoured guests and a particular touching moment was when president Banfi expressed his happiness of the outcome of the event «I am thrilled two-fold, first for having the opportunity to hold this competition in Italy, it is a dream come true for me. And second, I am of course extremely proud that Italy found a place on the podium». After the speeches came the moment all the players were waiting for, the awards ceremony. Sport director Zimmermann first expressed his gratitude to the organization before distributing the awards with much fanfare. First the trophies for the best individual results were given out: Sandra Nordin from Sweden taking home the cup for the women’s category while Samuel Hofer from the winning Swiss team also took the title of best individual in the men’s category. Following the individual awards was the team awards, each team being called up to receive their respective medals to the music of their National Anthems, this moment was made even more moving as each team proudly sang the words to their anthem. After the awards all the guests were invited to enjoy the buffet set up for them and view the art show, set up on the first floor of the Palazzo, of Swiss artist Willy Varlin- an exhibition set up by the township of Legnano, which remained open especially for the pleasure of all the guests and athletes and was accompanied by live harp and guitar music.
Yet in the end all the Nations were awarded for their hard work and participation in the tournament as the township of Canegrate gifted every Nation with a beautiful hard covered book showing all the sites and beauties of the town. As best expressed by Canegrate’s sport alderman Roberto Meraviglia, who distributed the books to the different Nations, «everyone here is a winner tonight».
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