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Russia crushes Great Britain 7-1 at 2021 Ice Hockey World Championship in Riga

Both teams are in Group A

RIGA, May 22. /TASS/. The Russian men’s ice hockey team dominated on Saturday, defeating Team Great Britain 7-1 in the second match of the 2021 IIHF (the International Ice Hockey Federation) World Championship.

Both teams are in Group A. The matches are played without spectators.

Anton Burdasov (6th and 10th minutes), Mikhail Grigorenko (8th minute), Sergey Tolchinsky (11th minute), Pavel Karnaukhov (31th minute), Andrei Kuzmenko (50th minute) and Anton Slepyshev (54th minute) scored for the Russian national team. Liam Kirk (19th minute) scored for Team GB.

The 2021 Ice Hockey Championship is hosted by the Latvian capital of Riga between May 21 and June 6. The championship’s matches are played at two venues in Riga.

The main venue is the Arena Riga and it hosts Group B matches, two quarter-final games, the semi-final round and the medal round. The second venue is the Olympic Sports Centre, which has been converted into a 6,000-capacity ice rink and hosts Group A matches and two quarter-final games. All 16 participating teams are housed in one hotel and the tournament is organized in the so-called bubble mode.

The Russian national team has been placed in Group A alongside the national teams from Sweden, the Czech Republic, Switzerland, Slovakia, Denmark, Belarus and Great Britain. Group B lists the teams from Canada, Finland, the United States, Germany, Latvia, Norway, Italy and Kazakhstan.

According to last year’s ruling of the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS), Russian athletes are prohibited until December 2022 from participating in world championships and Olympic Games under the national flag and to the tune of the national anthem.

Therefore, the Russian national ice hockey team is participating at the 2021 IIHF World Championship in Latvia wearing uniforms with the logo of the Russian Olympic Committee (ROC), a flame and the Olympic rings.

In mid-April, the International Olympic Committee (IOC) approved the use of First Piano Concerto by Pyotr Tchaikovsky’s musical composition for awarding ceremonies of Russian athletes at the Olympic Games in Japan this summer and the same musical piece is now played after the victories of the Russian ice hockey squad at the championship in Riga.