United they stand
Political sidebar to Korea’s first Olympic hockey game makes it night to remember
PYEONGCHANG — When it was over, the most unusual, unlikely political hockey game in Olympic history, the president of the International Olympic Committee stood beside the president of South Korea and the sister of the head of North Korea, all on a hockey bench, probably for the very first time.
All of them offering encouragement and congratulations for the debut of the Unified Korean team that was brought together in the days leading up to the Olympic Games.
“This wasn’t just a hockey game,” IOC president Thomas Bach told the Korean players who lost 8-0 to Switzerland. “It was more than that.”
“It was a pep talk,” said Randi Griffin, the Canadian playing for Korea. “And he told us we’re part of something bigger (than just a game.)
It was bigger and noisier and hectic, this screaming, cheerleading introduction to Korea at the Olympic hockey level. This was a team forced together by politicians, with an Olympic assist, just weeks before the Games and days after coach Sarah Murray had named her roster.
Suddenly, her roster had to include three North Korean players she didn’t know and hadn’t seen before.
And three players she already had named to her roster were suddenly giving up Olympic ice time to what some might consider the enemy at a Games played on home turf.
“I didn’t ever anticipate this happening,” said Murray, the Canadian head coach of what was until a few weeks ago the South Korean national team. “I don’t even know what to say. It happened. It was out of our control. They (the North Koreans) just want to learn and get better in hockey. I understand that.
“We heard rumours in July that they were going to combine the two (countries) and then we stopped hearing that. The government stopped talking about it. Right now, I’m really wishing it had happened in July and we had a full season to work with them.”
She’s thinking like a hockey coach. Bach was acting like a statesman. The crowd was simply frenetic and celebratory. And this wasn’t entirely new.
There was a unified hockey team of broken and fractured former arms of the Soviet Union that played together and won a gold medal in men’s hockey in 1992.
That was significant at the time, especially for that unlikely group.
This was of a different level, two countries of different political bents, that couldn’t be divided, suddenly, at the largest winter sporting time in one country’s history, a coming-together that likely will have ramifications only for the moment.
But a moment, even with a one-sided 8-0 defeat, that happened to be significant.
Murray is a hockey coach, not a political scientist.
When the daughter of former NHL coach Andy Murray came to talk to her group about their Olympic debut, she completely avoided the politics.
She talked about preparing for the game just like it was any other game. She talked to them about enjoying the moment. She told them there’s never going to be a moment like this again for any of them.
She was talking hockey. She couldn’t have been talking politics. She did have the unpleasant task of telling some of her players that they wouldn’t be dressing, because of the mandated North Koreans now on the roster. They made the team but didn’t get to play. That, she said, was difficult, but not as difficult as she thought it might be.
“The chemistry is better than I ever predicted,” she said, talking of the South Koreans coming together with their new teammates. “They laugh together. They hang out together. They eat meals together. I’ll walk into locker-room and they’re all laughing together. You can’t tell who is from the north and who is from the south. They’re just girls playing hockey.”
In an absolutely crazed environment. The Koreans in the stands at the Kwangdong Hockey Centre cheered the puck, cheered missed passes, cheered offsides, cheered faceoffs. They had no idea, really, what they were cheering for, but they did so all night long.
“It was very cool,” said Phoebe Staenz of the Swiss team. “This was not like anything I’ve ever seen before. But it was a lot of fun.
“Sure, it was all over the newspapers and we were aware of the (political) situation but once we got into the game, it was a hockey game. It was about the sport.”
And it was about a night unlike any before it in Olympic hockey history.