This past season you worked closely with both the men’s and women’s national team programs, what was the past season like?
We tried to follow that path that had been started since Hungary hockey has taken tremendous steps forward in the past 10-15 years. There is always room for improvement but I think he have closed out a great season. The hardest thing now is that once a team reaches a particular level how to break through that ceiling to the next one. The U18 national team played at the Division 1/A World Championships, which is an incredibly hard group, the U20 had the chance to move up to Division 1/A and it did. The Women’s U18 had the goal of staying in the Div. 1/A group, not only did they achieve this goal they finished in fourth place. Mens team did not have the best tournament however they still had a great season.
You will continue your work with the HIHF as the general vice president, how will this be different from your old position?
There will not be any really big changes, I will still be working with the Women’s program and I will still be a member of the board of the HIHF as well. In the technical committee I will still be representing women's hockey. I am pretty much back in my original position in which I worked exclusively with women's hockey.
As board member of the IIHF you proposed the idea of the Women's A-Pool being expanded from eight to ten teams, this was expected, which is a pretty big deal in sports diplomacy. What are the next steps with this?
I am very proud of this because this is the hard work of a number of people during the past few years. Expanding a World Championship group is never easy because then the budget of the tournament also increases. You need to manage with more teams thus the infrastructure also needs to be better, more hotels and a venue that can handle 10 teams. Everything started after the Vancouver Olympics when it looked like women's hockey might be dropped because of the sport being dominated by Canada and the U.S. We were looking ways to make the sport more interesting. A number of countries started to put more money and energy into the sport, we were able to see real development during the winter games in Sochi where there were a number of exciting games during the tournament. We felt that the competition in Division 1/A was so balanced that we were unable to predict who would win promotion or be relegated, because of this the A-Pool was expanded.
And how did the process work of this being approved?
This was proposed to the IIHF board in March and the rules committee, before the vote there was no way of knowing if this would pass or not. I sat down and spoke to each and every member of the board and explained to them why this would be beneficial to everyone in the long run, despite this leading to an increase in spending. The IIHF board ended up voting unanimously in favor of expanding the A-Pool.
The women's national team just missed out on taking home a medal at this years Division 1/A World Championships. This upcoming season the top two teams will move up to the A-Pool, what are the chances that Hungary will be one of those teams?
This past season I was hoping that the girls not finish last and if they could win one game that would be great. Compared to that they picked up two wins, it was surprising that they lost 1-0 to one of the favorites, Japan in the opening game of the tournament. I am very proud of the girls and I would not be surprised to see them in the A-Pool in a couple of years. The International Olympic Committee would like to have the same amount of men and women participating in the Winter Games, right now there are 12 men's team and donly 8 womens, the next step would be to have 10 women's teams.
