1981 FIB WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP MEN

Khabarovsk, USSR, 7-15 February

The 1981 World Championship was the 12th World Championship. The tournament was held for the third time in USSR. It was an historic tournament when the winning streak for USSR was broken. Sweden won their first World Championship and it happened on Soviet soil. But it were small margins between the two teams. Sweden won the first game 6-1 but USSR the second 3-1. Sweden won the Championship on better mutual results against USSR.

The champion was solved by the teams playing a double series. Both games between USSR and Sweden was played in front of a big number of spectators, 25,000 in each game. In a later game, USSR could not beat Sweden by the same goal difference, and on the basis of mutual games, Sweden won the World Championship. USSR won the silver and  Finland bronze.

1 SWEDEN 

Thomas Fransson, Jörgen Johansson, Mats Carlsson, Lars-Ove Sjödin, Bengt Carlsson, Stefan Karlsson, Håkan Karlsson, Sören Böström, Per Togner, Christer Kjellqvist, Anders Söderholm, Jan-Erik Callberg, Lars Ångström, Bengt Ramström, Ola Johansson, Mikael Arvidsson, Kent Björk, Håkan Sundin (Head coach)

2 USSR     

Sergei Lazarev, Alexander Gospodinov, Vitali Anufrienko, Valeri Botchkov, Eugene Velikanov, Vladimir Korytin, Yuri Lahonin, Leonid Lobachev, Sergei Lomanov, Nikolai Pazdnikov, Alexander Pershin, Vladimir Plavunov, Alexander Rychakov, Vitali Savluk, Alexander Tsyganov, Valeri Eichwald, Viktor Shakalin, Vasili Trofimov (Head coach)

3 FINLAND

Unfortunately no team roster

Some reflections on 1981 Khabarovsk tournament

Sören Boström, Swedish Captain. Photo: USSR Bandy Federation