The International Olympic Committee (IOC) recognizes the sport because the requisite 25 nations have bandy federations (about 14 actually play regularly), but it does not have sufficient standing for the Olympics. The Russians, who will stage the 2014 Olympics in Sochi, are pushing the IOC to give bandy some role at those Games.
The earliest record of a bandy club, Bury Fen in England, dates to 1813. In those days the fens of East Anglia regularly froze in winter, giving rise to a lively culture of distance skating and bandy. In 1853, a game, referred to as “hockey on the ice,” was played at Windsor Castle with Prince Albert in goal. One of the earliest soccer clubs, and one still playing today, was founded in 1865 as Nottingham Forest Football and Bandy Club.
The rules of bandy were codified in 1882, seven years after the rules for hockey were codified in Montreal. While hockey spread across Canada and the northern US, bandy spread across Northern Europe, becoming a popular wintertime game from the Netherlands to Prague to St Petersburg, Russia.
FADEAWAY
But by the late 1920s, warmer winters and the more manageable logistics of hockey — with about half the players on a rink about half the size — took their toll. Bandy disappeared from England and the Netherlands, and the Czechs switched to hockey.
The last holdouts were the Nordic countries, and especially Soviet Russia. Dinamo Moscow was that nation’s top bandy club in 1946 when it staged an exhibition of “Canadian hockey,” which caught on quickly. The Soviets became so good at hockey so fast not because of any government-backed effort, as Westerners tend to believe, but because Russians had played bandy through long, cold winters for decades.
Bandy, known as ball hockey or Russian hockey, is still popular there today, mainly in Arctic cities like Arkhangelsk and across Siberia. But this year’s world championship is being staged in Moscow at a six-year-old indoor stadium, the 10,000-seat Krylatskoye Arena.
Russia has won 23 championships, and Sweden, the defending champion, has nine. They could meet in tomorrow’s final if Russia beats Kazakhstan and Sweden defeats Finland in today’s semi-finals.
RSS