Feburary 12, 2009
OLY.001

OLYMPIC PICTURE COMPLETE
-- GROUPS SET FOR VANCOUVER 2010 --

After two rounds of qualification tournaments, including 15 nations, the final field is set for the 2010 Olympic Winter Games in Vancouver. China and Slovakia won their respective final qualification tournaments to book the two available spots.

When the women’s Olympic tournament begins in Vancouver on February 13, 2010, this is how the groups will look:

Group A: Canada, Sweden, Switzerland, Slovakia
Group B: United States, Finland, Russia, China

Qualification began back in September 2008 with the pre-qualification tournaments. This is how China and Slovakia ended up as the last two teams in the Olympic field (teams are listed according to IIHF World Ranking, group winners in bold):

OLYMPIC PRE-QUALIFICATION – SEPTEMBER 2-7, 2008
Group A (Liepaja, Latvia): Latvia, Italy, Slovakia, Croatia, Bulgaria
Group B (Maribor, Slovenia): Norway, Slovenia, Austria, Great Britain

FINAL OLYMPIC QUALIFCATION – NOVEMBER 6-9, 2008
Group C (Bad Tölz, Germany): Germany, Kazakhstan, France, Slovakia
Group D (Shanghai, China): China, Japan, Czech Republic, Norway