Bandy World Championships

The Bandy World Championships are a competition between bandy-playing nations (they should not be confused with the Bandy World Cup, a club competition). The tournament is administrated by the Federation of International Bandy.

Although bandy has been played since the 19th century, the first men's world championships were only played in 1957, and the first women's ones were only in 2004. From 1961-2003, the men's championships were played every two years, but has since then been played annually. The WCS in 2010 was first cancelled,^[1] but then Moscow agreed to organize it on short notice. ^[2] In 2014 it is planned to be played in Sochi at the same time as the Olympic Games.

Participating nations

For a long time, only four countries competed in the world championships: the Soviet Union, Sweden, Finland and Norway, with the Soviet Union as the dominating country. Since then, more countries have joined the tournaments, starting with the United States in 1985. The interest for the sport has spread to other parts of Europe, North America and Asia, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 also opened the way for separate national teams from the former states of that union. The record number of participants are 14 for men and 7 for women. With more nations competing, group B was created in 1991. From 2012 there was a group C for the first time as 14 countries participated. Japan and Kyrgyzstan made their first World Championships. Russia, Finland, Sweden, Kazakhstan, Norway and USA played in group A, Belarus, Canada, the Netherlands, Hungary and Latvia in group B and Estonia, Kyrgyzstan and Japan in group C. In each championship, the best team in group B use to go into a playoff match with the team which came bottom of the A-group, replacing them if they won. There was no playoff match in 2012. The last team of group A was automatically relegated and the 1st team of group B promoted. The same goes for the exchange between the groups B and C. In 2013 they will be played in a location separate from group A.

TV broadcasting

The interest is biggest in Sweden, Finland and Russia.^[3] For a few times now it has been shown on Eurosport 2. FIB has given the rights for the 2012 tournament to SPORTLIVE LLC.[1]

Bandy World Championships, men

Year	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Venue
1957	Soviet Union	Finland	Sweden	Helsinki, Finland
1961	Soviet Union	Sweden	Finland	Norway
1963	Soviet Union	Finland	Sweden	Sweden
1965	Soviet Union	Norway	Sweden	Soviet Union
1967	Soviet Union	Finland	Sweden	Finland
1969	Soviet Union	Sweden	Finland	Sweden
1971	Soviet Union	Sweden	Finland	Sweden
1973	Soviet Union	Sweden	Finland	Moscow, Soviet Union
1975	Soviet Union	Sweden	Finland	Finland
1977	Soviet Union	Sweden	Finland	Norway
1979	Soviet Union	Sweden	Finland	Sweden
1981	Sweden	Soviet Union	Finland	Khabarovsk, Soviet Union
1983	Sweden	Soviet Union	Finland	Helsinki, Finland
1985	Soviet Union	Sweden	Finland	Oslo, Norway
1987	Sweden	Finland	Soviet Union	Stockholm, Sweden
1989	Soviet Union	Finland	Sweden	Moscow, Soviet Union
1991	Soviet Union	Sweden	Finland	Helsinki, Finland
1993	Sweden	Russia	Norway	Hamar, Norway
1995	Sweden	Russia	Finland	Roseville, MN, United States
1997	Sweden	Russia	Finland	Västerås, Sweden
1999	Russia	Finland	Sweden	Arkhangelsk, Russia
2001	Russia	Sweden	Finland	Oulu, Finland
2003	Sweden	Russia	Kazakhstan	Arkhangelsk, Russia
2004	Finland	Sweden	Russia	Västerås, Sweden
2005	Sweden	Russia	Kazakhstan	Kazan, Russia
2006	Russia	Sweden	Finland	Stockholm, Sweden
2007	Russia	Sweden	Finland	Kemerovo, Russia
2008	Russia	Sweden	Finland	Moscow, Russia
2009	Sweden	Russia	Finland	Västerås, Sweden
2010	Sweden	Russia	Finland	Moscow, Russia
2011	Russia	Finland	Sweden	Kazan, Russia[4][5]
2012	Sweden	Russia	Kazakhstan	Almaty, Kazakhstan[6]
Upcoming events, provisionally planned
2013				Sweden[7]
2014				Sochi, Russia[4][5]

Medeo was the main arena for the 2012 tournament

Medal table

Countries in italics no longer compete at the World Championships.

Country	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Medals
Russia  Soviet Union	20 !6 14 20	10 !8 2 10	2 !1 1 2	32 !15 17 32
Sweden	11	14	7	32
Finland	1	7	19	27
Norway	0	1	1	2
Kazakhstan	0	0	3	3

Bandy World Championships, women

Year	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Venue
2004	Sweden	Russia	Finland	Finland
2006	Sweden	Russia	Norway	United States
2007	Sweden	Russia	Norway	Hungary
2008	Sweden	Russia	Finland	Sweden
2010	Sweden	Russia	Norway	Norway
2012	Sweden	Russia	Finland	Irkutsk, Russia[8]

Medal table

Country	Gold	Silver	Bronze	Medals
Sweden	6	0	0	6
Russia	0	6	0	6
Finland	0	0	3	3
Norway	0	0	3	3

References

External links

• Results from the championships 1957-1999 by Per G. Olsson