Free Dispatches from the Sporting Life by Mordecai Richler Page B

drink with them.”
    While Canadian and Swedish journalists were outraged by Kowalchuk’s misadventures, the men representing international news agencies found the tournament dull and Stockholm a subzero and most expensive bore. Late every night the weary reporters, many of whom had sat through three hockey games a day in a cold arena, gathered in the makeshift press club at the Hotel Continental. Genuine melancholy usually set in at 2:00 a.m.
    “If only we could get one of the Russian players to defect.”
    “You crazy? To work for a lousy smelting factory in Trail? Those guys have it really good, you know.”
    The lowest paid of all the amateurs were the Americans, who were given $20 spending money for the entire European tour; and the best off, individually, was undoubtedly the Swedish star, Tumba Johansson. Tumba, a $10-a-game amateur, had turned down a Boston Bruins contract offer but not, I feel, because he was intent on keeping his status pure. A national hero, Tumba earns a reputed $40,000 a year through a hockey equipment manufacturer. First night on the ice not many Swedish players wore helmets. “Don’t worry,” a local reporter said, “they’ll be wearing their helmets for Tumba on Wednesday. Wednesday they’re on TV.”
    It was most exhilarating to be a Canadian in Stockholm. Everywhere else I’ve been in Europe I’ve generally had to explain where and what Canada was, that I was neither quite an American nor really a colonial. But in Sweden there was no need to fumble or apologize. Canadians are known, widely known, and widely disliked. It gave me a charge, this—a real charge—as if I actually came from a country important enough to be feared.
    The affable Helge Berglund claims there are more than a hundred thousand active players and about seven thousand hockey teams in Sweden. How fitting, he reflects, that the Johanneshov
isstadion
should be the scene of the world championship competition. “The stadium’s fame as the Mecca of ice hockey,” he continues in his own bouncy style, “is once more sustained.”
    My trouble was I couldn’t get into Mecca.
    “You say that you have just come from London for the
Maclean’s,”
the official said warily, “but how do I know you are not a… chancer?”
    With the help of the Canadian embassy, I was able to establish that I was an honest reporter.
    “I could tell you were not a chancer,” the official said, smiling now. “A man doesn’t flow all the way from London just for a free ticket.”
    “You’re very perceptive,” I said.
    “They think here I am a fool that I do everybody favours—even the Russians. But if I now go to Moscow, they do me a favour and if I come to London,” he said menacingly, “you are happy to do me a favour too.”
    Inside the
isstadion,
the Finns were playing the West Germans. A sloppy, lacklustre affair. Very little body contact. If a Finn and a West German collided, they didn’t exactly say excuse me; neither did any of them come on in rough National Hockey League style.
    I returned the same night, Monday, to watch the Smoke Eaters play the exhausted, dispirited Americans. Down four goals to begin with, the Canadians easily rallied to win 10–4. The game, a dull one, was not altogether uninstructive. I had been placed in the press section and in the seats below me agitated agency men, reporters from Associated Press, United Press International, Canadian Press, and other news organizations, sat with pads on their knees and telephones clapped to their ears. Therewas a scramble around the American nets and a goal was scored.
    “Um, it looked like number 10 to me,” one of the agency men ventured.
    “No, no—it was number 6.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Absolutely.”
    “I’m with Harry,” the man from another agency said. “I think it was number 10.”
    A troubled pause.
    “Maybe we ought to wait for the official scorer?”
    “Tell you what, as long as we all agree it was number 10—”
    “Done.”
    All