His Two Passports Present the Games With One Headache

The Olympic hockey tournament was on the verge of chaos on the eve of the quarterfinal round because of the International Ice Hockey Federation’s decision to expel Swedish defensemen Ulf Samuelsson due to passport problems, but not to penalize his team.

The IIHF deviated from its bylaws by voting merely to ban Samuelsson, who under Swedish law had forfeited his Swedish citizenship by getting a U.S. passport and thus was ineligible. The Czech Republic on Tuesday filed a protest over the IIHF’s circumvention of its own rules and asked that Sweden be stripped of its victories, as the rules stipulate.

Sweden also protested Samuelsson’s expulsion and asked that the rugged defenseman be reinstated because he did not knowingly violate Swedish law.

The Court of Arbitration for Sport met Tuesday afternoon but came to no immediate decision. If the Czech Republic’s appeal is successful, Sweden--which won the gold medal at Lillehammer in 1994 and was ranked among the medal favorites here--will drop from second to fourth in its group and three of Wednesday’s four scheduled quarterfinal matchups will change.

The pairings as determined by round-robin play were Canada-Kazakhstan, Russia-Belarus; Czech Republic-U.S. and Finland-Sweden. If Sweden’s victories are forfeited, Russia will play Sweden--a much tougher opponent than Belarus, which advanced to the finals by winning its preliminary-round group title--the Czechs will play Belarus and the U.S. will play Finland. Only Canada’s game against Kazakhstan would be the same regardless of the ruling by the Court of Arbitration of Sport.

“The rules are the rules,” said Czech Coach Ivan Hlinka, whose team would benefit most from a change in the pairings.

Article 204, point 7a of the IIHF’s bylaws state: “If the eligibility of one or more players is proved during a championship, then the games played with the ineligible players shall be forfeited and the ineligible player shall be dismissed from the tournament.” However, the scheduling of the Olympics is so precise, there is less room for flexibility than at tournaments such as the World Championships.

To reconfigure the quarterfinal pairings at such a late stage would affect coaches who planned their strategy based on one opponent and are suddenly forced to change. In addition, teams’ practice times--which were allotted on the basis of their quarterfinal seeding--and TV broadcast schedules could also be affected.

Those complications undoubtedly influenced the decision of members of the IIHF’s directorate, who voted, 10-4, early Tuesday morning to sanction Samuelsson but not his team.

“I think it’s the best solution we could find,” said Rene Fasel, president of the IIHF. “If we stripped Sweden’s points that would have penalized Russia. . . . I think we could save the tournament with this decision.”

Swedish officials said Samuelsson had a U.S. passport simply to make it easier for him to work in the U.S. Samuelsson, a 14-year NHL veteran, spends most of his time in the U.S. but maintains a summer home in Leksand, Sweden.

“Neither Ulf nor anybody else has caused this problem intentionally,” said Leif Emsjo, a spokesman for the Swedish hockey team. “Ice hockey is a very international sport and there are scores of foreigners in the NHL. There are many cases of players with dual citizenship.”