Olympic Qualification moved to Great Britain
by Martin Merk|03 SEP 2021
After hosting an Olympic Qualification tournament on the men’s side, Nottingham will also host one of the women’s hockey groups after Korea’s withdrawal.
photo: Dean Woolley
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The Women’s Olympic Pre-Qualification Round 2 Group F was moved from Korea to Great Britain and will take place from 7-10 October 2021 in Nottingham.

Originally the four-team tournament with Korea, Great Britain, Slovenia and Iceland was planned at the Gangneung Hockey Centre, a venue from the 2018 PyeongChang Olympics. However, the Korea Ice Hockey informed the IIHF about the withdrawal of their hosting rights due to Covid-19 restrictions in the province and the entire country that currently include the prohibition of indoor contact sports and a 14-day quarantine for teams travelling to the Republic of Korea.

All four teams have confirmed their participation at the new venue, the National Ice Centre in Nottingham, Great Britain. The venue had already hosted a men’s Olympic Qualification tournament last year.

The next round of Olympic Qualification for the 2022 Olympic women’s ice hockey tournament will be staged in three groups in Nottingham (Great Britain), Torre Pelice (Italy) and Bytom (Poland).

The winner of each tournament will advance to the Final Olympic Qualification held in Chomutov (Czech Republic), Fussen (Germany) and Lulea (Sweden) 11-14 November 2021 to decide about the three open spots at the 2022 Olympics. The top-6 teams – USA, Canada, Finland, ROC, Switzerland and Japan – as well as host China are already qualified.

“We are really excited to be hosting one of the groups in the latest round of Olympic Qualifying. I'd like to sincerely thank the National Ice Centre for their support in getting this confirmed in such a short space of time. They’ve really gone above and beyond - and pulled out all the stops to turn this around in such a short space of time,” said Ice Hockey UK chairman Clifton Wrottesley.

“This is a massive opportunity to showcase the women's game and we are thrilled to be hosting it in such a fantastic venue. What a fantastic prospect - being able to support our women on their quest towards the Olympics in Beijing next year and being able to do it on home ice. I really hope that every ice hockey fan out there in the UK will be able to come to the arena in Nottingham and cheer on the GB ladies, who I know will be giving it their all to qualify for the next round next month. I’ll be there, I hope to see you all there too.”

The game schedule and ticket information will be released at a later stage.