China has spent billions of dollars preparing for next year’s Winter Olympics. It has built entire ski resorts from scratch, constructed an array of new venues and even made plans to generate vast amounts of fake snow. But there is at least one shortcoming that all that spending has not been able to overcome.
With the Games only months away, hockey’s global governing body is giving serious consideration to dropping China’s hockey team from the men’s competition. The reason? China is simply not good enough, and it appears likely to face a series of blowout defeats after having been drawn in the same pool as the powerhouse teams from the United States and Canada.