US and Canada national ice hockey teams ready to boycott 2014 championship in Minsk

• 6.03.2012, 16:50

The campaign to boycott the Ice Hockey World Championship in Belarus continues.

The 2014 Ice Hockey World Championship can be held in Belarus, but the national teams of the USA and Canada may boycott the event, president of Latvian Ice Hockey Federation Kirovs Lipmans told in an interview to Telegraf.lv.

“I am against the deprivation of these rights to Belarus. It is sad that politics ruin everything. Sport should unite people, not separate. This is not people’s guilt anyway,” Lipmans expressed his position.

He said he had returned from Zurich, where he had had a meeting with Rene Fasel, president of the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF). According to him, the question of removing the championship from Belarus was not touched.

“If the question were so acute it would have been discussed. Fasel asked my advice on the matter at the previous meeting and we had a talk about it. The IIHF president hopes the situation will be solved by the championship,” Lipmans is confident.

Talking about further development of the situation, he said it was too early to make a final decision on the question.

“Fasel keeps to his opinion, but I don’t know what will happen further. Everything is possible. What exactly? Let’s recall the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. Yes, I am talking about boycotting. We cannot exclude a possibility that the USA and Canada boycott the international ice hockey championship 2014 and don’t go to Minsk. I repeat again: everything is possible,” he noted.

We remind, the IIHF Communications Director, Szymon Szymberg, and Lise Berg, secretary general at the Swedish section of Amnesty International, proposed to discuss a possibility of deprivation Belarus of the right to host the 2014 Ice Hockey World Championship. The topic may be discussed at the IIHF congress in Helsinki in May.