SLEDHOCKEY
HISTORY
In the 1960s a group of former ice hockey players at a rehabilitation center in Stockholm, Sweden decided that they wanted to resume playing hockey in spite of their physical disabilities. Their first attempts were rudimentary, but successful: they attached hockey skate blades to metal frame sleds and created sticks using bike handles connected to round poles. Following their first game on a lake outside of Stockholm, the sport spread relatively quickly throughout Sweden amongst both athletes with a physical disability and those who were able-bodied. By 1969 Stockholm boasted a five-team sled hockey league and also hosted the first international game between one of Stockholm’s teams and a team from Oslo, Norway. Although the sport remained popular in these Scandinavian countries, it actually took quite some time to spread to other nations. For example, two other hockey perennial powerhouses, Canada and the United States, did not form teams until 1982 and 1990, respectively. Fitting with its Scandinavian roots, sled hockey debuted at the Paralympics as an exhibition game between two local Swedish teams in
the 1976 games in Örnsköldsvik, Sweden. It became an official Paralympic event at the 1994 games in Lillehammer, Norway and since then, has been played at every winter Paralympics, as well as at several world championship events.
ELIGIBILITY
Unlike many adaptive sports, sled hockey does not have a ranking system that classifies athletes differently based on their individual impairment, and, instead, only has one class. In order to be eligible to play, the only requirement is that athletes have some type of lower body impairment that inhibits them from playing traditional stand-up hockey. This eligibility and evaluation process is actually quite stringent at high levels of competition—a 45-page International Regulation book discusses the rules of eligibility, evaluation and classification. Although sled-hockey players participating at high levels of competition, such as at the Paralympic level, are regulated by these formal eligibility procedures, most sled hockey teams do not strictly enforce them.
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