Beijing 2022: China Hockey Group chief calls for review of host team exemption at Winter Olympics
- Chinese men’s ice hockey team’s inclusion at Games increasingly being called into question, with sport’s authorities reviewing their case on eligibility grounds
- ‘It’s tough to see how anyone, or the game of hockey, wins at this point,’ says founder of Hong Kong’s largest ice hockey organisation
With the Chinese men’s team’s eligibility for the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics being called into question, the founder of Hong Kong’s largest ice hockey organisation wants the sport’s authorities to go back to the drawing board if they want to prevent a similar situation arising in the future.
Olympics host nations are given a place in every team sport, however China’s men’s team, ranked 32nd in the world, are set to face three medal contenders in February, with the United States (ranked 2nd), Germany (5th) and Canada (1st) all in their group.
And China Hockey Group’s Gregory Smyth says with NHL stars tentatively locked in for the Games, an even wider discrepancy has been created when it comes to a skill gap between the elite teams, and the rest of the world.
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“The host team exemption should be reviewed as it puts the Chinese national team in an extremely difficult position of trying to field a world-class team against the NHL’s most elite players,” said Smyth, who is originally from Canada and has been involved in Hong Kong’s ice hockey scene for more than 20 years.
