Ice hockey is one of the most popular sports in Switzerland. The start of the ice hockey season is as eagerly anticipated as the football championship and every local team has its own fiercely loyal fan base.

Switzerland’s love affair with ice hockey dates back to the early 1900s. The first Swiss ice hockey championship was staged in 1908-09 in French-speaking Switzerland and won by Bellerive Hockey Club, Vevey. However, it would not be long before the rest of the country was in the grip of ice hockey fever. In 1910-1911 the first team from German-speaking Switzerland - Akademischer EHC Zurich - was established. Today, teams from each one of Switzerland’s linguistic regions play in the National League A.

Ice hockey games are guaranteed stadium-fillers in Switzerland. SC Bern (SCB) has the best attendance figures in Europe, averaging an amazing 15,818-strong crowd for home games.

Associations
Founded in 1908, the Swiss Ice Hockey Association administers the game at both national and regional level. 100 years on, the association now has 320 affiliated clubs, 800 registered umpires and 11,4000 registered players, as well as 13,500 up-and-coming young players. The 1,200 SIHA-registered teams play around 160,000 matches every year.

64 national ice hockey associations are members of the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF), which was also founded in 1908 and is now based in Zurich.

International success
The Swiss national ice hockey team has chalked up many international victories over the years. At the 1928 Winter Olympics in St. Moritz, it won bronze, finishing behind Canada (gold) and Sweden (silver). It has also taken home nine bronze and six silver medals in the European Championships, as well as winning gold an impressive four times - in 1926 and 1935 (Davos), in 1939 (Basle and Zurich) and in 1950 (London).

Although it has been quite some time since it enjoyed the same level of success, the Swiss national team is still one of the best in the world. In the 2008 IIHF world rankings, the men’s team is ranked seventh, while the women’s team is in the top five.