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OLYMPICS

Sweden’s men reach ice hockey final in Sochi

The Swedes enjoyed a come-from-behind victory against the Finns in Friday's ice hockey semi-final at the Winter Olympics in Sochi.

Published: 21 February 2014 15:32 CET
Sweden's men reach ice hockey final in Sochi
The lineman pulls Sweden forward Jimmie Ericsson and Finland forward Olli Jokinen apart during the first period. Photo: TT
 
The men's team remained undefeated on Friday afternoon following a 2-1 thriller against Finland.   
 
Erik Karlsson scored a powerplay goal late in the second period as Sweden rallied from a 1-0 deficit to reach their first final since they won gold at Turin in 2006. The other goal was scored by Loui Eriksson, who netted two against Slovenia in the quarter final win.
 
 
Karlsson, with his tournament-leading eighth point, scored with 3:34 left in the second on a shot from the point. Finnish goaltender Kari Lehtonen got a piece of Karlsson's shot but not enough.
   
Finland has been beset by injuries and the news got worse prior to the game against Sweden when their top goaltender Tuukka Rask was taken off the roster for Friday's game.
   
Rask was replaced by Lehtonen, who finished with 23 saves. Finland was already missing their four top centres, including Saku Koivu and Aleksander Barkov.
   
Olli Jokinen opened the scoring for Finland 6:17 into the second period on a sharp angle shot that somehow squeezed through goalie Henrik Lundqvist's leg pads and trickled over the goal line.
   
Defenceman Sami Vatanen, who played a strong game for Finland, started the play by shooting the puck into the corner where Jokinen picked it up.    
 
Loui Eriksson's goal tied it up for Sweden, 1-1, five minutes later after being left alone at the side of the net.
   
Finnish defenceman Olli Maatta turned the puck over behind the net and Nicklas Backstrom got it out front to Jonathan Eriksson who quickly moved it to Eriksson who had an open net to shoot at.
   
Sweden finished the round robin with the best record and won its first four matches in this tournament: 4-2 against Czech Republic, 1-0 against Switzerland, 5-3 against Latvia and 5-0 against Slovenia.
   
Friday's semi-final marked the final Winter Games contest for all-time Olympic scoring leader Teemu Selanne, of Finland, who finished with 41 career points after adding four more from the Sochi Games.

 
The Swedes will meet either defending champions Canada or the United States in Sunday's final.
   
Sweden, who have won all five of their games in Sochi, have finished fifth or won the gold medal in their last half dozen Winter Olympics.
 
The final will be played on Sunday at 1pm, Swedish time. 
 

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STOCKHOLM

The year Sweden organized the Olympics and defied expectations

Stockholm Olympic Stadium defied those who said Sweden wasn't advanced enough to host the Olympic Games in 1912, and has survived to become the world's oldest Olympic stadium actively in use.

Published: 25 April 2019 08:19 CEST
The year Sweden organized the Olympics and defied expectations
Stockholm's Olympic Stadium as it used to look. Photo: Bertil Norberg/TT

This article was written for Members of The Local. Read more articles for Members here.

Taking inspiration from the medieval city wall of Visby on the Swedish island of Gotland, Swedish architect and athlete Torben Grut designed a stadium for the 1912 Summer Olympics in Stockholm that would stand as a fortress of athleticism.

His success was both immediate and enduring, and the now-historic stadium has lived up to its impressive façade for more than a century, hosting countless sporting and cultural events, witnessing more than 80 athletic world records, surviving a bombing, and simply reminding the world of its important place in Olympic history.

Initially, however, the outlook for both the stadium and the Stockholm Olympics – the fifth modern Olympic games – was far from promising. As historian Therese Nordlund Edvinsson wrote in a 2014 article in The International Journal of the History of Sport, despite Sweden's “modest ambitions” for the games, “critics argued that the country was too undeveloped to arrange a major sport event”.

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Djurgården versus AIK in 1915 at Stockholm Stadium. Photo: TT

The original plan for the stadium was an accordingly modest – and temporary – whitewashed wooden structure. The decision to make it permanent was likely a relief to Grut, whose other designs included Solliden Palace, the summer residence of the Swedish royal family on the island of Öland. Though still relatively small, with an original seating capacity of around 20,000, the completed stadium became a model for subsequent Olympic stadiums. Likewise, and in defiance of the critics, the Stockholm Olympic Games were considered a great success.  

In a 2012 article entitled, “Stockholm 1912 set the gold standard for the modern Olympics,” in the British newspaper The Guardian, sports journalist Frank Keating wrote, “Stockholm's 1912 Games are still considered standard-setting for Olympic decades to come. Women's competition was allowed for swimming and diving, while men's boxing was banned: and on the track photo-finish electronic-timing was introduced as a back-up to the hand-held judges' stopwatch.” It was also, he explained, “the last Olympics where any individual could just turn up and hope to enter a competition”.

MORE HISTORY FEATURES BY VICTORIA MARTÍNEZ:


One of the numerous concerts organized at the Stockholm Stadium. Photo: Fredrik Sandberg/TT

Over the years, the appearance of Stockholm Olympic Stadium has changed little, and the seating capacity has even been reduced. In 2011 and 2012, the stadium underwent its only major renovation in preparation for its centenary. Nonetheless, it has been an incredibly adaptable venue, serving for many years as home to Swedish football team Djurgårdens IF, and accommodating a wide variety of sporting and cultural events – from ice hockey to American football and from Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti to Swedish DJ Avicii. It is also where the Stockholm Marathon ends each year.

The stadium has also maintained a long and at times somewhat chequered connection to the Olympic Games. In 1956, for instance, the equestrian events of the Summer Olympics taking place in Melbourne, Australia, were hosted some 15,000 kilometres away in Stockholm Olympic Stadium due to animal quarantine restrictions in Australia. And in August 1997, as Stockholm vied to host the 2004 Summer Olympics, the stadium was one of several sites in Sweden bombed or set alight by Swedish far-right extremists opposed to Sweden hosting the games.

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Although modern stadiums designed or used for the Summer Olympics now typically seat three to four times more people than Stockholm Olympic Stadium did in 1912, the historic venue still has a chance of returning to its Olympic origins. If Stockholm-Åre is selected to host the Winter Olympics in 2026, the snowboarding competitions are slated to take place in the landmark stadium, neatly tying together 114 years of Olympic history.

Victoria Martínez is an American historical researcher, writer and author of three historical non-fiction books. She lives in Småland county, Sweden, with her Spanish husband and their two children.

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