Writers and documentarists have already analysed the cold war aspect of chess. Now film-maker Gabe Polsky does the same with ice hockey, focusing on legendary Russian player Slava Fetisov, whose career embodies a greater story. He morphs from being a 70s Soviet soldier of hockey to a well-paid international star in the free-market US after the 90s, and finally welcomed back to his homeland as a slightly chilling Putin apparatchik and ambassador for the game. He is a hilariously difficult and truculent interviewee. For decades after the second world war, the Soviet international hockey team ruled the world, and being officially affiliated with the Red Army, its players really were cold warriors. Their confrontations with the American team provided the sports world with some exciting ideology clashes on the ice rink. Unlike the summer games at Moscow and LA in 1980 and 1984, boycotts did not apply to the Winter Olympics at New York and Sarajevo in the same years; capitalism and communism faced off, on skates. Polsky tells a fascinating story of how the Red Army’s veteran coach Anatoli Tarasov taught his players a fluid artistry of play: they were the Bolshoi of hockey. But, after a catastrophic performance against the US in 1980, he was replaced by the dour and unimaginative Viktor Tikhonov, whose tyrannical regime increasingly jarred as the Soviets elsewhere embraced glasnost. A fascinating and touching tale.
