At the opening  day of the 2009 IIHF Congress in Berne, Belarus's bid to host the 2014 IIHF World  Championship emerged as a clear winner. Belarus, the fastest rising hockey nation,  received around 75 percent of the votes and will be the 18th country to host the World Championship.

Four countries applied for the 2014 IHWC: Belarus, Latvia, Hungary and Ukraine. With 75 of the votes, Belarus won the bidding contest with a clear margin. Hungary received 24 votes, while Latvia got 3 and Ukraine 2 votes. One member (IIHF president, Rene Fasel) abstained from voting. Belarus also filed applications to host the 2010 and 2013 IHWC, but lost to Germany and Sweden.

The 2014 IHWC will be played at two arenas in close proximity to Minsk. The main arena (Minsk Arena, capacity: 15,000) is currently in the final stage of construction and will open in December 2009 as the home arena for Dynamo Minsk in the KHL. The other arena (Arena Chizhovka, capacity: 8,000) will be constructed 18 km from Arena Minsk in the other end of the city.

The budget for the organizing committee is €11.4 mio (app. US$15.5 mio)., a staggering figure considering that Belarus is one of the poorest countries in Europe (GDP per capita: app US$4,000). It was only a few months ago, Belarus received a US2.46bn emergency loan from the IMF.

The Belarussian government, which have very close ties with the national hockey federation, hopes that the 2014 IHWC will help to boost the economy and improve the image of the country in the West. The political relationship between Belarus and the EU and United States have recently improved. The resignation of the interior minister, Vladimir Naumov, last month has widely been interpreted as a move improve the relationships further. Naumov was one of four high-ranking government officials that have been banned from entering the EU  and the U.S. Another persona-non-grata was the former sports minister, Yuri Sivakov, who was banned by the OIC from attending the Olympic Games in Athens. Naumov, however, keeps his position as the chairman of the Belarussian Hockey Federation.

Belarus - the fastest rising hockey nation

Belarus is arguably the fastest rising hockey country in the world. In the past 10 years, the number of registered players have trippled from around 900 to 3,000. This number is, however, only a fraction of the number of registered players in the European elite nations. It's also quite small compared with the countries such as Switzerland (25,000) and Slovakia (9,000) --countries with roughly the same population size--and even Latvia (5,000), a country with four times less inhabitants. With relatively little material, Belarus has nevertheless managed to firmly establish itself as a top 10 hockey nation.

In the years to come, hockey in Belarus is envisioned to grow much faster than in the past decade. The sport benefits tremendously from the fact that president Lukashenko is a devoted hockey fan. It is a stated objective of president Lukashenko and his government that hockey should be the number 1 sport in the country. The government recently submitted a report that concluded that the growth of hockey could help to alliviate social problems in the country. As many other countries, Belarus suffers from relatively high youth unemployment. Improved conditions for the sport could help to move the youngsters from the street corners and to reduce the crime rate.

Improved conditions means first and foremost more arenas. Today, Belarus has officially 13 hockey arenas (compared with only 4 when the country became independent in the 90s). In the next years, the government plans to construct no less than 30 new arenas, including the gigantic Minsk Arena. In addition, the government will devote considerable resources attracting and educating hockey coaches at all levels as well as improving the management of the hockey clubs. In the shorter future, Belarus also has ambitions to have more than one team in the Kontinental Hockey League (KHL).

Staging the 2014 IIHF World Championship is an important element in this grand plan to further development hockey as a sport in Belarus.