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SWEDISH WOMEN WIN OLYMPIC BERTH
  
Tearful Russian hockey team leaves ice fearing loss
will seal the fate of their sport back home
 
Monday, April 7, 1997
By Beverley Smith
Sport Reporter

Medals weren't important yesterday for two teams at the women's world
hockey championship.

Sweden and Russia squared off for the fifth Olympic berth yesterday,
and Sweden won 3-1.

"It's too bad one game has to mean so much for two teams," Swedish
coach Bengt Ohlson said. "I think it would be better for eight teams
in Nagano. That would help women's hockey a lot."

As it is, only six women's teams will play at the Nagano Games. Japan
gets an automatic berth, as the host country.

The Russians, fearing that their sport would collapse if they didn't
get an Olympic berth this week, left the ice in tears yesterday. They
did not attend a post-game news conference, but returned to watch the
bronze-medal game before leaving the city. Finland won the bronze with
a 3-0 victory over China.

"They were a little bit upset," said Tim Rutkevich, the Russian team
liaison, who is a University of Waterloo student. "Nobody knows what
will happen. It was one of their fears that if they didn't qualify,
the federation of ice hockey will not pay their bills for the future."


Nothing went right for the Russians yesterday. They even failed to
score on a penalty shot, awarded them when a Swedish player held the
puck in the goal crease. When Russian coach Valentin Egorov asked
giant Russian star Ekaterina Pashkevich to take the penalty shot, she
declined.

Instead Zhanna Schelchkova tried--and missed.

Pashkevich, appearing tired and listless yesterday, spent more time in
the penalty box than on the scoring list. The Swedes, who defeated the
Russians at the European championship earlier this year, outshot them
yesterday 30-19.

The Russians lost all hope when Swede Camilla Kempe scored a
shorthanded goal at 10:29 of the third period, to give the Swedes a
3-1 lead.

Unfortunately for the Russians, it will be four more years before they
will have another chance at an Olympics--and eight teams will play at
the 2002 Games. But by 2002, it may be too late. "The fear is that the
federation won't want to sponsor something that is very long-term,"
Rutkevich said. "They have to invest money where they will get a
return."

The Swedes faced the same fate if they had lost yesterday's game, said
Ohlson, who was for 25 years the men's national coach. "It is one of
my happiest victories," Ohlson said, "because it meant so much for
hockey. Now women's hockey will boom in Sweden."

Ohlson said he had never seen a women's hockey game before last
October. Women's hockey in Sweden is not exactly a popular pastime.
Only about 1,000 women play the game. A Swedish women's league has six
or eight teams, but only three have any talent, he said. The women who
played this week lacked finesse and technique--never getting enough
time to practice--but they made up for it in morale, Ohlson said.

An example of the morale is Kristina Bergstrand, a forward whose
salary as a postal worker goes mainly toward boosting her hockey
skills. She said yesterday she had to forfeit three weeks of holidays
and spend $4,000 to $5,000 to attend the tournament this week.

"This team has to pay for every stick and every pad themselves,"
Ohlson said. "They are really amateur. They get to play only eight to
10 good games in a year. The rest are not games. The rest is practice.


"But there is a lack of ice time because boys have the ice all the
time."

He said with a little more financial support and practice time, the
women could quickly increase some of their technical skills. Because
they qualified for the Olympics yesterday, that is more likely to
happen now.

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