Ice Hockey World Cup 2023 moved from Russia may be held in Finland and Latvia

President of the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) Luc Tardif said that the 2023 World Championship, which was supposed to be held in Russia, would most likely be hosted by Finland and Latvia.

The IIHF announced in April that Russia was denied the right to host the 2023 World Cup, which was supposed to be held in St. Petersburg. The Russian Ice Hockey Federation (FHR) said it would appeal the decision.

“We have only one candidate for the 2023 World Cup – the joint application of Finland and Latvia,” Tardif announced at the IIHF congress, which is taking place at this moment. “Because we are now holding the World Cup here. There are ready-made arenas here – in Tampere and Helsinki, everything is ready here. We talked with the Czech Republic, where the 2024 World Cup is to be held. Conducted negotiations with Switzerland. Nobody wanted to take 2023.

– We found ourselves in a difficult situation, that a year before the start of the 2023 World Cup, for security reasons, we must change the organizer of the World Cup. We are running out of deadlines, the World Cup in 2023 starts in early May. At the moment we have only one candidate – Finland. It’s not very good to have a tournament in the same place two years in a row, but we are in a difficult situation and it’s hard to find another way out. There is still interest from Hungary and Slovenia for a joint tournament, but they still have a raw application, we will talk with them again, ”Match TV quotes Tardif from the IIHF congress.

Earlier, the IIHF reported that Hungary and Slovenia also submitted a joint application to host the World Championships in 2023, but the Hungarians failed to receive government guarantees.