IIHF 2021 World Championships Moved Out of Belarus (but only because Skoda said so)
This story, which has been developing for months now, has had quite a few twists and turns which probably need a bit of explaining. (I already made an earlier thread about this, but I just feel like it's easier to make a new one.)
I'll add some links in a second post for those interested.
The extremely short version is that IIHF today officially announced they will not hold the 2021 World Championships in Minsk (Belarus).
The games were supposed to be a joint event held in Riga (Latvia) and Minsk. However after the 2020 presidential election in Belarus, were the current president/dictator Lukashenka (or Lukashenko, both are correct, don't ask me to explain that) essentially stole the election, the people of Belarus started a massive protest campaign against him which lasted for months, and is still going on to some extent, although after Lukashenka started responding with continuously increasing violence, mass arrests and torture of prisoners, the protests have mostly needed to take other forms than regular mass marches. The fight however is still very much going on.
Since this is related to a sports event, it's worth noting that atypically for Eastern Europe (and most countries really), and even more atypically for a dictatorship where sports has been under very close government supervision, numerous athletes and coaches have also taken part in the protest campaign in one way or the other, and some even quite locally prominent ones have also been arrested as a result. Other types of pressure has also been put on athletes, such as threatening their families and of course cutting them from government programs or getting them fired from their jobs.
For quite a while it seemed like a done deal that the games would be moved, but in a somewhat surprise move the current president of IIHF René Fasel (who really should at every turn be called a corrupt spineless weasel) recently visited Belarus to offer his strong support to Lukashenka and declared that the games will not be moved.
This obviously raised a lot of objections, two of which are most notable. One objector was the current IIHF vice president Kalervo Kummola (FIN), and another was Skoda, who many might recognize as probably the most prominent sponsor of the WC games. (To the point that they are sometimes jokingly called "Skoda Games").
Two days ago Skoda made an announcement that it will not be sponsoring ice hockey world championship games in Belarus. This of course decided it, and the announcement to not hold the games in Minsk was made today.
It's worth mentioning that the IIHF announcement is in itself an exercise in weaseling, as they cite "player and visitor safety" as the reason to not hold the games in Minsk, completely ignoring the actual reason people have been protesting against holding the games in Minsk, which is human rights issues.
Considering that this became quite clearly a power struggle between Kummola and Fasel, which Kummola seems to have won quite decisively, it's also likely that this also means Fasels 27 year long IIHF presidency is about to come to an end.
No other host city is announced at this point. It's currently unclear if the games will be moved completely, and it's also reported that IIHF is planning to make the games a bubble in the style of the NHL playoffs.
While the IIHF WC tournament isn't the biggest sports event in the world, the decision to move the games for essentially human rights reasons might have massive ripple effects in the sports world. As most sports fans would know, holding major international sports events in countries with massive human rights issues is a topic that goes back at least all the way back the Berlin Olympics. There's pretty substantial pressure for example to take the 2022 soccer World Cup away from Qatar because of human rights issues.
The previous stance of the sports community on this has traditionally been that "sports transcend politics". The decision to move the games is pretty close to unprecedented, but now that someone has already done it, it will make it that much harder to ignore this stuff in other cases.
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Hopefully Latvia doesn't lose out because of this.
Given the distance between Latvia and Minsk, it didn't really make sense to make them both co-hosts. I am not sure if any of their Baltic neighbours can co-host or if they can take on the whole thing.
Helsinki is only slightly further away from Riga than Minsk, so maybe that is an option.
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"A pessimist thinks things can't get any worse. An optimist knows they can."
Of course I do have to say a few things in sort of a defense of Fasel.
First of all, Fasels era as IIHF leader has unquestionably successful for the sport and IIHF, so there is a reason why he's been around so long.
Second, a large part of his success has been his ability to navigate the really very different interests of Russia, North Americans and Europeans. Yeah, you probably have to be kind of a weasel to do that.
Third; Putin has been backing Lukashenka, and while I don't think he's made a public announcement on the topic, everyone knows Putin has been aggressively against the idea of moving the games away from Belarus. Putin and Russia has a lot of sway in the European hockey world, and that's kind of natural. They are a big financial supporter of the games on top of being a traditional hockey powerhouse.
Considering how seriously Putin takes all things ice hockey, and his habit of assassinating those who have slighted him, I get why a lot of people are simply afraid to stand up to him.
Fourth;
There is some genuinely noble thinking behind the idea that sports should "transcend politics". There is something appealing in the idea that people from across borders can be united in their love for the same sport, and ice hockey has been one of the major bridges between first Soviet Union and the west and now Russia and the west. It's understandable that a lot of people would love to see that tradition upheld.
I still really want to see Fasel gone.
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Careful what you wish for. Sometimes better its the Devil you know...
Well, right now this kind of looks like a palace coup by Kalervo Kummola, and that's a devil I know a lot better than Fasel
He's been power figure in Finnish hockey really since I was even born. This is absolutely literal, as he's been the Finnish representative in IIHF since 1976.
I also really dislike him, for the record. Just not as much as Fasel, and for very different reasons. First of all I think his views on the sport are antiquated, but more importantly he has held on to his position by sidelining anyone who might rise to challenge him in any way (which has meant sidelining a lot of very capable people) and promoting useless yes men to positions they are predictably useless in.
His nick name here in Finland has been "the Iron Chancellor", and that's pretty descriptive. I very much doubt he would have supported moving the games from Belarus if he didn't stand to gain personally.
All that said, he himself seems to be quite good at his job, and it also seems like he's mellowed somewhat in his later years... Or has simply adapted to a new environment since he finally resigned as the head of Finnish Ice Hockey association a few years back to focus on his IIHF work.
...He's also 75, so even if he does become the new president of IIHF, that's not likely to be a long reign.
IIHF 2021 World Championships Moved Out of Belarus (but only because Skoda said so)
