IIHF President Luc Tardif explains the decision to cancel U18 women's tourney while WJC proceeds
The recent cancellation of a IIHF women's U18 tournament has generated a lot of discussion of late, with a lot of people calling into question the IIHF's commitment to women's hockey.
The reason that the IIHF seems to be taking so much heat for the decision is because it allowed the U20 men's World Junior Championship tournament to go on as planned, while cancelling 6 other tournaments, including the women's U18 tourney.
On Tuesday, IIHF President Luc Tardif sat down with IIHF.com to clear the air, addressing a wide variety of subjects - but the one thing he really wanted to emphasize was the fact that the WJC tournament proceeding had nothing to do with gender. Here is an excerpt of one of his talking points during the interview.
This is not a gender issue, this is a COVID-19 issue. I would ask in turn how is it fair to postpone all the time the top divisions and always to simply cancel the lower divisions? These cancellations have affected six tournaments, not just one, including two men's U20 event that critics seem to conveniently forget.�
In a normal season, we are not cancelling anything. The IIHF is not in the business of cancelling tournaments, we are here to play tournaments. But we are battling circumstances that are out of our control, and to be perfectly honest we have to think of the future too.
Is there an economic incentive to host the men's World Championship and World Juniors every year no matter what? Absolutely. But people misunderstand that this is because we favour men's hockey over women's, which is completely false. The revenue generated from these two events enables our federation to survive and support the operation of all other IIHF World Championship events. So if I have to make every effort to host a specific tournament to ensure the survival of other events, then it is my responsibility as IIHF President to do this.
The IIHF has run a women's hockey program since 1990, and was instrumental in the integration of women's hockey into the Olympic program in 1992. Our women's championship program has grown to encompass over 12 women's senior and U18 tournaments and include the participation of 44 of our 82 Member National Associations. Our commitment to women's hockey is longstanding, legitimate, and substantial.�
I and the new IIHF Council believe in women's hockey, we are committed to investing in women's hockey now and into the future. We empathize with the players and fans of the game, and we look forward to returning to a full Championship program.
Tardif appeared to have no qualms with admitting that the WJC tournament is a big money-maker for the organization and funds a lot of the other tournaments. This appears to be something that many are taking issue with - nor for the fact that the decision was financially motivated, but that some feel as though there is a class divide in terms of which tournaments are deemed important and which are less important because of what occurs at the gate rather than on the ice.
I have a feeling we're going to hear a lot more about this over the coming weeks, because while this is not, in Tardif's words, a gender issue, an argument could be and probably will be made that proceeding with the U18 women's tournament certainly wasn't viewed as a priority to the IIHF.
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