The vice president of the HIHF and IIHF board member Dr. Zsuzsanna Kolbenheyer will be the chairwoman of the Women’s World Championships in Kamloops Canada, with Péter Beck being the officials supervisor for the IIHF.
“Every year at the IIHF congress of the year the it is approved that who will be the chairpeople for the upcoming world championship cycle at each event.” explained Dr. Zsuzsanna Kolbenheyer to icehockey.hu. “the IIHF executive committee has priority when the secretary general picks who will go to what world championships. In the past I have usually consulted my colleagues before I made my decision, I am in charge of women’s hockey so I would get priority on going to the women’s A-Pool world championships but if someone would like to go in my place I am open to it. I think the Winter Olympics and the youth games are more important, I was the chairwoman in Sochi and will be for the youth games in Lillehammer next year.”
At this year’s Women’s A-Pool world championships in Canada Dr. Kolbenheyer will be the chairperson, she was also asked what exactly is her responsibility at an event like this.
“This is an honor because this means that they trust me and know that I can run an A-Pool world championships, however the real problems tend to come to light at the lower level world championships. Canada is always a great organizing federation, if they are a host nation they put all their effort into having a professional and well run tournament.”
She isn’ the only Hungarian that will be taking part in the international stage, Péter Beck, president of the Ice Hockey Officials Association will be the referee supervisor for the sixth time, this year he will be at the U18 Division 1/B championships in Italy.
“The referee supervisor is basically the referee instructor, they are their to support them and and to supervise them during games. This includes a pre tournament information meeting that covers the refreshing of rules and what to particularly to keep an eye on. The supervisor is in charge of the game assignments, in the meantime they also do ice testing and timing for the referees. Each game is reviewed by the supervisor and by the match officials for that game. After the tournament the referee's overall performance is graded and submitted to the IIHF.”
“In my experience the most important thing is to support the referee in their match calls and for them to call a perfect game”
The work for the supervisor starts about two weeks before the tournament with all the preparations and it goes a couple days longer as well.”