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Mar 22, 2023, 12:56 PM ET
ZURICH — Russia and Belarus groups have been excluded by the Worldwide Ice Hockey Federation on Wednesday from all its world championships subsequent season, together with the ladies’s occasion in the USA.
The IIHF cited safety considerations for gamers, competitors employees and followers — due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine — to increase the exclusion that can stretch past two years when the 2023-24 season is over.
“It’s too quickly,” IIHF president Luc Tardif stated about letting Russia return. “Too many dangers.”
The ladies’s worlds is ready to be performed in U.S. cities in March or April subsequent 12 months and the boys’s occasion within the Czech Republic is scheduled subsequent Might.
Ice hockey is a favourite sport performed by each Russian President Vladimir Putin and Belarusian President Alexander Lukashenko.
The Russian Hockey Federation dismissed the IIHF’s safety considerations as a “contrived purpose” to maintain its groups out of competitors.
“It’s a determination which is neither constructive, nor useful for world hockey,” the federation stated in an announcement.
The IIHF has adopted steerage given by the Worldwide Olympic Committee inside days of Russia beginning the battle in February final 12 months to take away Russian groups from worldwide competitions and to search out new hosts for occasions the nation was to stage.
Nevertheless, the IOC is now pushing Olympic sports activities governing our bodies to search out methods to incorporate Russian and Belarusian athletes as neutrals in qualifying occasions for the 2024 Paris Video games. The worldwide governing our bodies for judo and fencing have stated this 12 months that they’re ready to readmit Russian and Belarusian athletes.
The IOC govt board is because of talk about the Russian concern at a gathering subsequent Tuesday in Lausanne, Switzerland.
Tardif, talking after a call by the ruling council he chairs, stated the IIHF should resolve within the subsequent 12 months if Russia and Belarus can participate within the 2026 Milan-Cortina d’Ampezzo Winter Video games.
