I wrote yesterday that the United States currently holds all seven senior world-level ice hockey titles thanks to the sweep of the Olympic titles last weekend:
2026 Men’s Olympics, Milan
2026 Women’s Olympics, Milan
2025 IIHF Men’s World Championship, Stockholm & Herning
2025 IIHF Women’s World Championship, Ceske Budejovice
2022 Paralympics, Beijing
2025 IIHF Men’s Para World Championship, Buffalo
2025 IIHF Women’s Para World Championship, Dolny Kubin
So, there’s one which you don’t see here. The International Olympic Committee is not going to have a women’s Para hockey tournament at the upcoming Milan Paralympics.
The reason, interestingly, has a thread of logic when it comes to American field hockey, especially at the scholastic level.
The IIHF began international sled hockey competition at the Paralympics in 1994, but it was explicitly a men’s competition. Since 2010, international teams could add women to their Olympic rosters. But that made it difficult for national federations to start creating women’s sled hockey teams because, according to Peggy Assinck of Team Canada, “The argument has always been, ‘Well, there is a place for them. They just haven’t broken (onto) the roster yet.’ “
If that sounds like attempts in Massachusetts, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Connecticut, and Maryland to start boys’ varsity field hockey, it should.
Eventually, enough women started forming Para hockey teams, training on their own and doing their own fundraising, to start club and international competitions. The first women’s international championship was held in 2014, featuring the United States, Canada, and a European team. The IIHF started a true World Championship last year with teams from the U.S., Canada, Norway, Australia, and Great Britain, with a “Rest of the World” team.
It’s the fact that full national teams from just five countries showed up to last year’s IIHF Women’s World Championship that is the single biggest reason that women’s Para ice hockey is not in the Olympic program. Normally, in order to be included in an Olympics, a world sports governing body has to demonstrate a widespread participation on most of the continents, and must also have held a number of world championships before consideration.
Might that happen in the next four years? We’ll see.