Canada Crooked Out Of Bronze

Swiss goaltender GERARD RIGOLET wanders far out of his goal to play the puck against Canada at the 1964 Winter Olympic Games in Austria. In spite of 61 saves from Rigolet, Switzerland still lost 8-0 to Canada at Innsbruck. Rigolet, who saw no shortage of action in Austria, also stopped 88 shots as the Swiss fell 15-0 to the USSR at the Innsbruck Games.

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A narrow 3-2 loss to the Soviet Union had left CANADA in a three-way tie for second place with Czechoslovakia and Sweden; all three teams finished the final round-robin of the 1964 Winter Olympic Games with records of five wins and two losses.

Canada were under the impression they had done enough to earn the bronze medal.

Under the pre-arranged formula as agreed to by the International Ice Hockey Federation with the International Olympic Committee, the tie-breaker between the three teams should have involved goal differential in the games contested only between those three teams. In that instance, Canada would have placed third :

• + 3 — (1-1 w-l, 9-6 gf-ga) — Sweden 
•    0 — (1-1 w-l, 4-4 gf-ga) — Canada 
•  - 3 — (1-1 w-l, 6-9 gf-ga) — Czechoslovakia 

President JOHN “Bunny” AHEARNE, however, called an emergency meeting of the IIHF Council. For reasons not officially explained, it was decided to change the tie-breaker format to goal differential involving all games played in the final round-robin at Innsbruck. This decision dropped Canada into fourth place :

• + 31 — (5-2 w-l, 47-16 gf-ga) — Sweden
• + 19 — (5-2 w-l, 38-19 gf-ga) — Czechoslovakia
• + 17 — (5-2 w-l, 32-17 gf-ga) — Canada

The official announcement by the IIHF changing the tie-breaker came ten minutes before the commencement of the medal ceremonies for ice hockey at the Innsbruck Games.