Amid the somewhat murky details emerging from US President Donald Trump’s and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s call on Tuesday — the two leaders discussed a halt on attacking energy infrastructure, then Russia immediately bombed Ukraine’s energy infrastructure — one deal at least was clear: The US and Russia would resume playing ice hockey.
Although benign enough on the face of it, the idea of organized games in the US and Russia, between players of both countries, was yet another concession to Putin from Trump. Unlike the US president’s previous gifts — pre-emptively allowing Russia to keep the territory it has illegally invaded, refusing to give any security guarantees to Ukraine and strongly hinting US sanctions would soon be lifted — this was soft power, wrapped in a pair of skate laces.
Putin loves hockey. He plays it himself. (His clearly terrified opponents let him score at will.)
Photo: David Gonzales-Imagn Images / USA Today
Russia is a global powerhouse of the sport, but the best Russian players eventually leave Russia, to go play in the National Hockey League (NHL) in the US. The money is better, and the fame greater. Russian hockey has always been geopolitical. The Soviet teams of the 20th century were explicitly military proxies.
The players were soldiers in the Red Army. Their coach was a colonel. They bunked in barracks for 11 months of the year. When they began playing — and beating — North American teams for the first time, the matches were clashes of ideology. The communists, raised since kids to play together in a collective system on the ice, versus the individualist American and Canadian professionals trying to score goals on their own (and when that did not work, trying to bash the Russians in the head). In the 1960s and 1970s, the Soviet Union won five of six Olympic golds.
There were two big exceptions, both at the height of the cold war: the 1972 Summit Series, when a team of Canadian bruisers barely squeaked out a victory in eight games against the silky Red Army, and the 1980 Lake Placid Olympics when a plucky US team of minor-leaguers and misfits (of course) defeated the heavily favored Soviets for gold on home turf in what became known as the “Miracle on Ice.” In case you missed the significance, it inspired a Hollywood film starring Kurt Russell.
Photo: AP
To fully appreciate the geopolitical significance of these hockey proxies, look no further than the recent Four Nations competition, where Canada and the US worked out their animosity over Trump’s threats to make Canada the 51st state by beginning their first game with three separate fistfights in nine seconds.
Canada won the trophy and the nation practically imploded with emotion. The other two nations? Sweden and Finland. If you think Russia did not feel left out, let Putin bringing this up in the context of a summit with the US president about the biggest war in Europe since 1945 be a clue.
Just as Saudi Arabia knows the soft power of sport, getting back on their blades on the global ice rink would be a huge triumph for Putin’s Russia. Even better that it comes just as Alexander Ovechkin, the best Russian player of all time and the literal founder of a Putin fan club, is about to eclipse Wayne Gretzky’s NHL goal record — and to do so while playing for the Washington Capitals no less. (Gretzky is Canadian, so it is not an American loss — although he has recently attracted Canadian ire by having dinner at Mar-a-Lago and not wearing enough patriotic red.)
As for Trump, who appears to see Putin not as a foe but as an equal — great men leading great powers and carving up the world between them —the idea of a Four Nations competition was silly anyway.
For him, it has only ever been the Two Nations, and you can imagine him and Putin watching it together from the Kremlin press box at Moscow’s CSKA arena, not discussing Ukraine at all.
‘DEVASTATED’: Argentina’s win was a reversal of their 28-24 defeat last week, with Australian forward Fraser McReight adding that ‘we did the same thing last week’ Argentina flyhalf Santiago Carreras punished an undisciplined Australia with 23 points off the tee as the Pumas held on grimly for a 28-26 win in Sydney yesterday to breathe new life into their Rugby Championship campaign. A try-fest beckoned in afternoon sunshine at Sydney Football Stadium, but Argentina needed only one through captain Julian Montoya, with Carreras doing the damage with seven penalties and a conversion in front of a sell-out crowd. A week after letting a 14-point lead slip in a 28-24 defeat to Australia in Townsville, Argentina saw most of a 21-point advantage erased in the final quarter as the
Captain Vijay Kumar led the way yesterday as the Hsinchu Titans claimed the Taiwan Premier League title at the Yingfeng Cricket Ground in Taipei’s Songshan District (松山), beating PCCT by 27 runs. The weather was a topic again, but not the rain that played a role in previous matches in the often-delayed tournament. Kumar, who made 80 not out from 63 deliveries, and teammate Vishwajit Kumar (58 from 43) rescued the Titans from a precarious state at the end of the power play in the T20 match. The visitors were put in to bat and struggled to 26-3 as PCCT
China’s state-run People’s Daily newspaper on Monday published an essay about Chinese basketball it said was written by LeBron James, but a representative for the NBA star said on Thursday that the article was based on a series of interviews. The paper, better known as the mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, had said James authored the essay, “Basketball is a Bridge that Connects Us,” a tribute to Chinese players and fans of the sport written in the first person. “LeBron James Pens an Article in the People’s Daily,” read a post published on the newspaper’s official WeChat account. On Thursday, a representative
San Francisco Giants pitcher Teng Kai-wei impressed against the Arizona Diamondbacks on Monday despite an 8-1 loss in the opener of the team’s nine-game road trip. Teng, the only Taiwanese pitcher active in MLB, struck out five while allowing two hits and one walk over four innings at Chase Field to finish with a no decision, as the teams were tied 1-1 when he finished his outing. He surrendered the lone run of his outing in the bottom of the first, which began with a walk, a hit-by-pitch and two strikeouts. Diamondbacks leadoff hitter Geraldo Perdomo advanced to third on
RSS