The history of Canadian ice hockey began in 1879, when students at McGill University in Montreal made the first rubber puck. This sport appeared at the Olympic Games in 1920 - a tournament of six teams of the Old and New Worlds took place in Antwerp.
Then it was the Summer Olympics, ice hockey entered the program of the White Olympics, starting in 1924. The pre-war and early post-war tournaments were dominated by Canadians. Only once, in 1936, at the Olympics held in fascist Germany, the Canadians lost to the British team.
In 1956, Soviet hockey players seized the palm from the Canadians, who until 1988 were only twice inferior to the Americans in the 1960s and 1980s. Russia picked up the baton of the USSR national team, winning the 1992 Olympic Games in Albertville, France. Until now, Russian hockey players have not been able to repeat that success.
At the last games of 2010 in Vancouver, losing in the quarterfinals to the Canadians with a crushing score of 3: 7, the Russians showed the worst result in more than half a century of participation in the White Olympics - sixth place. Prior to that, the Soviet and Russian national teams were invariably included in the top four teams.
The last twenty years, when the level of the leading teams caught up, the Olympic tournaments have become an arena of uncompromising and unpredictable struggle. Canada won twice during this period, Sweden won the same amount, and once Czech hockey players became triumphant.
Hockey Olympic tournaments are also interesting in that, unlike the world championships, the competitions of the National Hockey League, in which the leaders of all leading national teams play, are suspended for the period of matches, and the teams come to the Olympics with their best squads. They usually have a huge hockey party.
Since the 1998 Olympic Games in Nagano, Japan, women's ice hockey tournaments have been held. The first Olympic gold in this type of program went to the American women, who won the Canadian team in the final with a score of 3: 1. In the future, the Canadian hockey players were always successful.
