Winter Olympics: At last: two teams, two goals, a ball (well, a puck) and plenty of old scores to be settled - sounds like sport to me.
This weekend, the ice hockey took centre stage in Turin and the Italian city did its best to create the mood, snowing liberally so that the streets were white and sleety and reminiscent of the great hockey cities of Canada and North America.
Those countries remain the glamour teams in the prize team sport of the Winter Olympics but there were signs this weekend that the European upstarts no longer carry the same respect for the traditional masters of the game.
Perhaps the most startling result occurred on Saturday afternoon when Switzerland shocked heavy favourites Canada 2-0 in a bruising, old-fashioned encounter which two Canadian stars, Dany Heatley and Joe Sakic, finished with badly gashed faces.
Although the Swiss incurred two 10-minute penalties for those misdemeanours, they packed their goal while the Canadians hunted like wolves, peppering some 49 shots over the three periods without once bettering goaltender Martin Gerber. It was the first time the Swiss had beaten Canada in Olympic history and more than atoned for the embarrassing 33-0 defeat they suffered at the hands of the Canadians back in 1924.
They also set the tone for a weekend of surprises. Later that night, in the Torino Esposizioni, the Slovaks came out of the woodwork for a good old rowdy-down.
Although the venue is quaint by professional hockey standards, holding just 5,000 fans, the Slovakians generated an atmosphere worthy of a soccer stadium as their heroes defeated the USA by 2-1.
That Slovakia had Satan on their side helped. Miroslav Satan, the veteran New York Islanders forward, was very much the cult hero among the local crowd and he created the winning goal, getting deep inside the American defence and cutting a pass through for 12 to hammer home.
"Man, I would rather win and play bad," groaned captain Brian Rolston afterwards in accepting that the Americans had lost a great game. "They are a good team and they just gave us the perimeter and clog the middle. You depend on your power plays and they showed a lot of skill, they had to take a lot of big hits from teams. But I think as this tournament goes on, the way we are going to hurt teams is by getting in deep."
The Americans have only won gold in ice-hockey twice, both on home soil, the last time being the celebrated "Miracle on Ice" when a bunch of college athletes took on the dominant Russian ice-hockey regime and, in front of a live television audience, won 4-3. Since those heady days, the Olympic teams are filled with highly-paid professionals and American struggles on ice are not likely to be treated sympathetically at home. Things did not get any better last night, when second-ranked Sweden squeezed a 2-1 win. The USA may need to win Tuesday night's final preliminary game now to advance. And that, of course, is against Russia.
