Fixtures for Ostersund 2015 published

The competition schedule for the 2015 IPC Ice Sledge Hockey World Championships B-Pool has been published and it reveals that hosts Sweden will open their campaign against Poland on Monday 16 March.

Six teams are competing in the B-Pool event in Ostersund and all teams will play each other once in a round robin format.

In addition to Sweden’s game against Poland, the opening round pits newcomers Austria – who qualified at the start of February via a playoff win over Finland – against South Korea who finished seventh at the Sochi 2014 Paralympic Winter Games. Great Britain, bronze medallists in the 2013 B-Pool tournament, will face Slovakia.

The final round of fixtures on Saturday 21 March will see a rematch from Sochi 2014 with South Korea facing Sweden. Last year in Russia, the PyeongChang 2018 hosts were victorious 2-0 and a win this time round could see them promoted back into the A-Pool.

Three games will take place each day with matches starting at 12:00, 15:30 and 19:00. Teams will have a rest day on Thursday 19 March.

The detailed competition schedule can be found at the Ostersund 2015 website.

For all six teams taking part, a top two finish is essential if they wish to qualify for the PyeongChang 2018 Paralympic Winter Games as only the gold and silver medallists from Ostersund will progress to the 2017 A-Pool World Championships.

The team finishing sixth in Sweden will be relegated to a new C-Pool tournament, which will be created and run in the second and fourth years of each quadrennial, in 2016 and 2018.

In 2017, the top five finishers from the World Championships A-Pool will directly qualify for PyeongChang 2018. The bottom three teams from the A-Pool event and the top three teams from the B-Pool event will compete at the Qualification Tournament for PyeongChang 2018 that same year.

Ostersund 2015 takes place just before the 2015 IPC Ice Sledge World Championships A-Pool in Buffalo, New York, USA, from 26 April – 3 May.