On the Scene: Ice Hockey Federation Picks Sweden for 2013, Adopts Anti-Doping Code

(ATR) Sweden will host the 2013 world championships for ice hockey, the vote taken at the International Ice Hockey Federation congress in Vancouver.

The victory for Sweden was easy with 70 votes; second-place Belarus managed only 15 votes. Hungary and Czech Republic were the other candidates.

By a unanimous vote delegates adopted the World Anti Doping Code.

IIHF medical committee chairman Murray Costello said the code was originally written “with individual sports in mind and it made it very difficult for team sports to comply.”

But proposed amendments to the code, to be tabled in Madrid in November at the World Conference on Doping in Sport, made it necessary for the IIHF to act.

“This is the first time we are forced to ask you to do something that we would like done in your federation,” Costello told delegates.

WADA head Dick Pound told the International Olympic Committee in July sports that do not comply should be blacklisted from the Olympics.

Costello said the IIHF is fortunate that hockey “is not a sport that has heavy steroid use, we don’t think anyway, and our various championships show that by the number of tests that we have that provide no positive results.”

In the 2013 world championship, matches will be split between Stockholm and Malmo. Swedish-born Vancouver Canucks Markus Naslund, Mattias Ohlund and Daniel and Henrik Sedin lobbied on behalf of their country’s bid during Thursday presentations.

The 72nd IIHF World Championship is May 2-18, 2008 in Halifax and Quebec City and will be the first time Canada has staged the tournament. National Hockey League rink dimensions will be used, but the IIHF will decide later this year whether to also use the smaller North American neutral zone.

A proposal was tabled to cut the number of World Championship teams from 16 to 14 for the 2010 men’s tournament in Germany. A vote may happen at the IIHF’s 2008 centennial congress in Montreal.

The IIHF is proceeding with a European club championship to begin in 2008-2009 patterned after soccer’s wildly successful Champions League. The winner would play a National Hockey League team for the Victoria Cup, named after the skating rink in Montreal where historians say organized hockey was born on March 3, 1875.

IIHF president Rene Fasel ultimately wants the European champion to face the Stanley Cup champion in a hockey equivalent of golf’s Ryder Cup.

“As we had in the past Canada and the Soviets, we would like to have now Europe and North America,” Fasel said. “We need that, the NHL needs that, hockey needs that.”

Fasel said hockey also needs NHL players in the Winter Olympics beyond Vancouver 2010. There have been rumours that the NHL may not participate in the 2014 Games in Sochi, Russia.

“I hope that the players, if not the owners, they all understand that it’s good to go to the Olympics,” he said.

“That’s the unique opportunity to show the world of winter sport about the game, this is the stage where we can show our game with the best.”

Fasel has held the IIHF presidency for 13 years. He plans to seek re-election in 2008 for what could be his last term.

With reporting from Vancouver by Bob Mackin.