As China began to organise hosting the 2022 Winter Olympics one problem started to emerge – they had automatically qualified for the ice hockey competition, yet they didn’t have a team. The solution? Phoning around to put together a squad of ringers from scratch.
And so on Thursday, when they made their debut at the Games in Beijing, facing the might of a historically successful United States team, the China roster included players like 32-year-old American-Chinese goaltender Jeremy Smith from Dearborn in Michigan, listed as Jieruimi Shimisi. Likewise, Jieke Kailiaosi is better recognised by his friends in Chicago where he was born as Jake Chelios.
More than half of the 25 players in China’s squad were born or grew up in North America. Smith told ESPN he had been surprised to get a call inviting him to join a team in Beijing that could lead to an Olympic place. “If you’re joking,” he told his agent, “I’m waiting for the punchline.”
The International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) permits players to represent a country if they have lived and played in a league there for two years, and have transferred to the new national association.
So, in order to bond them together as a team – and ensure eligibility for the Games – players were contracted to a new Chinese club. In 2016 HC Kunlun Red Star entered the Kontinental Hockey League, a mostly Russian competition that also features clubs from Belarus, Finland and Latvia among others. China itself has no professional league, and the plan was hatched to avoid Chinese embarrassment on the international stage.
They have not fared well over their six seasons, reaching the play-offs only once. In the last three years they have won fewer than 40 of their 170 matches in regulation time. Things got so bad that late last year the International Olympic Committee (IOC) and IIHF discussed dropping China’s team from the Games, fearing they would be overwhelmed. “Watching a team being beaten 15-0 is not good for anyone, not for China or for ice hockey” said the IIHF president Luc Tardif.
Domestic fans have also not all taken kindly to the move. Social media posts have questioned their commitment and their qualifications to be Chinese. A typical post on social media site Weibo attached an image of the squad, with user kaixinwanmao saying “If you didn’t tell me, I wouldn’t know this was China’s men’s ice hockey team.”
Covid had a twist in the Olympics ice hockey tale though. The US team that China faced in their opening match had also been significantly weakened. In December it was announced that the NHL would not be sending players to the Olympics, with Commissioner Gary Bettman saying it was “no longer feasible” after the NHL season itself had been disrupted.
In their first ever Winter Olympics match China nearly took a shock lead after three minutes of the first period. It took 11 minutes for the US to break the deadlock. But after that the game unfolded very much as expected, with the final result going 8-0 to the Americans.
It may be that sporting success will determine the extent to which fans accept athletes representing China at these Games with dual heritage. San Francisco-born Eileen Gu, who has already secured one gold medal and will compete for two more, has proved hugely popular domestically and become one of the faces of the Chinese team in their home Games. However, she has been repeatedly questioned about what this means for her citizenship – China does not permit dual nationality ordinarily. Goaltender Smith clarified to reporters in Beijing ahead of his Olympic ice hockey debut that “I did not renounce my citizenship, they never asked me to.”
It might be an unconventional way to assemble a team, but it has given an Olympic shot to those who never thought they would have one. The Vancouver-born 36-year-old Brandon Yip plays right wing in the squad, and last featured in the top-level NHL in 2014. “I knew I wasn’t making Team Canada, that’s for sure,” he quipped.
After their opening defeat by the US, the task facing the ice hockey team representing China doesn’t get any easier. Their next matches are on Saturday against Germany, ranked fifth in the world, and on Sunday against Canada, ranked No 1.
