Bandy

Bandy

Bandy is a winter sport and ball sport played by two teams wearing ice skates on a large ice surface (either indoors or outdoors) while using sticks to direct a ball into the opposing team's goal. The international governing body for bandy is the Federation of International Bandy (FIB). Internationally, bandy's strongest nations in both men's and women's competition at present are Sweden and Russia. The playing surface, called a bandy field, is a sheet of ice that is considerably larger than a standard ice rink at 90–110 meters x 45–65 meters, about the size of a football pitch. The goal cage used in bandy is 3.5 m (11 ft) wide and 2.1 m (6 ft 11 in) high and is the largest one used by any organized winter team sport. The sport is considered a form of hockey and has a common background with association football (soccer), ice hockey, and field hockey. Bandy's origins are debatable, but its first rules were organized and published in England by members of the Bury Fen Bandy Club in 1882. Like association football, games are normally two 45 minute halves and there are 11 players per side. Players sticks are curved like large field hockey sticks and the bandy ball is roughly the size of a tennis ball with a cork core and hard plastic coating. Bandy balls are either orange or more commonly, cerise. Shouldering is allowed in checking situations and body contact therefore does occur, but body checking and fighting are illegal. Goalkeepers use special gloves made specifically for their position and wear them on both hands but do not use any type of stick. In Russia, bandy is called "hockey with a ball". A directly related variant of bandy, rink bandy, is played by basically the same rules but on a playing surface the size of an ice hockey rink with ice hockey goal cages and six players on each team (or five in the case of the USA Rink Bandy League). More informal varieties of bandy also exist, like seven-a-side bandy with regulation sized goal cages but without corner strokes, rules which were applied at Davos Cup in 2016. Rink bandy has in turn led to the creation of the sport of rinkball. Bandy is also the predecessor of floorball, which was invented when people started playing with plastic bandy shaped sticks and lightweight balls when running on the floors of indoor gym halls.⁣ Bandy has never developed a roller sport companion involving either inline skates or roller skates, though rink hockey can be considered to be a type of relative. Bandy has never developed an organized skateless winter variant like the ice hockey variant, spongee, and does not have a parasport variant. In 2001, bandy was recognized as a sport by the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Both traditional eleven-a-side bandy and rink bandy are recognized by the IOC. According to the Federation of International Bandy (FIB), based on the number of participating athletes, bandy is the world's second-most participated winter sport after ice hockey, but it is unclear how many are male participants and how many are female. The FIB has also stated that the sport ranks as the number two winter sport in terms of tickets sold per day of competitions at the men's world bandy championship. However, compared with the seven Winter Olympic sports, bandy's popularity among other winter sports across the globe is considered by the International Olympic Committee to have a, "gap between popularity and participation and global audiences", which is a roadblock to future Olympic inclusion. In addition, the Olympic Charter requires a sport to be widely practiced by men in at least 75 countries and on 4 continents, and by women in no fewer than 40 countries and on 3 continents in order to be accepted. The premier international bandy competition for men is the Bandy World Championship and the premier international bandy competition for women is the Women's Bandy World Championship. In Russia, it is estimated that more than one million people play bandy where it is played by men as a professional sport. The men's Russian professional bandy league is called the Russian Bandy Super League. The Russian Bandy Supreme League is the second tier of men's Russian bandy, below the Russian Bandy Super League. In Sweden, the Elitserien (literally, the "Elite League") is the highest bandy league in the country for men, while Bandyallsvenskan is the second division. In Finland, the highest bandy league for men is the Bandyliiga.

Update this biography »
Complete biography of Bandy »