THE WINTER OLYMPIC STORY

1929 on

THREE CANADIAN-BORN Australians — Kendall, Carson and McEachern — guided the development of Australia's first winter olympian and its first olympic team, without a single player import. The first olympic ice hockey tournament took place at the 1920 summer olympics in Antwerp and was transferred to the winter olympic games programme in 1924. Australia's first national ice hockey authority was officially established in 1923 to control both ice hockey and speed skating, through delegates from New South Wales and Victoria. Jim Kendall was already coaching a new generation of ice hockey players when he retired as a player in 1925. They were also ice racers. Unlike anywhere else in the world this decade, the Australian game was about speed, with minimal checking. Four years later, in June 1929, the NSW Ice Hockey Association was granted affiliation with the NSW Olympic Council, in recognition of the local association's cultivation of "ice hockey, speed and figure skating, with a view to sending them to the next Games" in 1932. The third winter olympics at Lake Placid in New York in 1932 were not attended by Australians. However, two of Kendall's protégés, Jim Brown and Ken Kennedy, were now representing New South Wales in ice hockey and speed skating, and winning the quarter-mile and half-mile championships. Brown was the first Australian to break British ice racing records, and the first to play hockey in the British National League when it was the biggest amateur league in the world. Kennedy followed suit in both speed skating and ice hockey. He also became the first Australian winter games olympian at Garmisch in Bavaria, Germany, competing in the 500m, 1500m and 5000m speed skating events. The fastest British Empire representative at the games, he remained in England as a professional skater in a team that included Australian world champions, Enders and Cambridge, and British olympian, Hope Brain.

A few years later, in June 1939, the Australian Ice Hockey Council proposed that Australia be represented for the first time in that sport at the 1940 Games. The main difficulty was finance, but the AIHC had opened a fund with the object of raising the required £1,500 jointly between the NSW and Victorian Associations. The Games in 1940 and 1944 were cancelled due to the world war. Kennedy returned in April 1946, and within the week the Australian Ice Hockey Association announced it was considering sending an Australian team to the 1948 olympic games at St Moritz in Switzerland. A month later the NSW Association announced that this was "not considered practicable, because of the cost involved". However, the Victorians thought otherwise, particularly Carson and McEachern. Kennedy was now the AIHF president and he supported them. New South Wales' dominance of interstate hockey had been ended by Molony's Victorians just before the war. The VIHA were admitted to the Australian Olympic Federation in 1950, and they re-established an Olympic Fund in 1954 (next page). It received at least some support from the NSW Glaciarium management. Although the ice hockey team had prepared for the 1956 winter games in Italy, the AOF did not reply to their request. The summer Olympiad was held in Melbourne that year, and Melbourne Glaciarium closed the year after. Most of the 1956 ice hockey team made the 1960 Games, with one New South Welshman, at a personal cost of about £600 pound each ($15 – 20,000 in today's money). Sydney Morning Herald, 13 Jun 1929 p16; 25 Oct 1935 p17; 18 Mar 1938 p 17; 27 Jun 1939 p15; 18 Apr 1946 p9; 23 May 1946 p9.