World Ice Hockey Championships, Bolzano is a candidate

Field hockey, World Cup

There will be Bolzano among the candidate cities to host the World Ice Hockey World Cup Division 1 Group A in 2024. The bid was officially submitted by the FISG, which will thus try to bring the rainbow event back to Italian soil after losing the 2023 assignment, which went by one vote to Nottingham (in that case the Italian candidate was Brunico).

“We chose Bolzano because it is an important place for field hockey and for the Italian national team,” explains Marcello Cobelli, head of the field hockey sector for the FISG, “and I am convinced that we will have a good chance: the Sparkasse Arena is a capacious structure (6,800 seats ed.), modern and well connected both with the city center and with the hotels. The Four Points by Sheraton, in fact, is just 600 meters from the facility and can be reached by the teams comfortably on foot. “We had an excellent conversation with the Municipality of Bolzano,” Cobelli adds, “which immediately made itself available, showing great enthusiasm. At the moment the South Tyrolean capital will play it out with Budapest: the choice will be made at the next IIHF congress, scheduled for May 25-27 in Tampere, Finland, where the Top Division World Cup is taking place these days. It has been since 1994, the year of its inauguration, that Bolzano’s Sparkasse Arena (formerly Palaonda) has not hosted an IIHF international event at the senior level.

These will not be the only two bids submitted by Italy. Renon, which hosted the U18 Women’s World Cup 1st Division Group A in January, will bid for the U20 Men’s World Cup 1st Division Group B with the Ritten Arena. The Würth Arena in Egna, on the other hand, will be in the running to host the Women’s World Cup 1st Division Group B.