Sports (WFAC)

The events in War in a Far Away Country affected the world of sports in many ways, profoundly in America and Europe.

Ice hockey

 * Czechoslovakia would be a powerhouse in the late 1940s and early, as the OTL champions were not arrested and imprisoned by Communist authorities for being "state traitors".
 * With the election of Miroslav Šubrt as the President of the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF) in 1969 (contrary to the controversial John "Bunny" Ahearne), the IIHF were more willing to allow professional players at the world championships. These reforms included changing the World Championships to an open format tournament, while the Winter Olympics remained an amateur tournament until 1994. Taking inspiration from soccer's FIFA World Cup, Šubrt proposed that the tournament should be played every four years, and arrange them in alternating even-numbered years with the Winter Olympics. To avoid a clash between the tournament and the Stanley Cup playoffs, the Pool A tournament would be moved to end-August and start-September. To strengthen the smaller hockey nations, regional tournaments (European Championship) would be played every two years in alternating uneven-numbered years between the World Championships and the Winter Olympics.
 * As a result of the change of the World Championship to an open-format tournament every four years, the Canada Cup/World Cup of Hockey don't exist in this timeline. The World Championship thus enjoy more popularity in North America.
 * As Czechoslovakia in this timeline is a western democracy, their players were free to play abroad. As a result, the first Czechoslovak players joined the first Swedish and Finnish players in the National Hockey League (NHL) and the World Hockey Association (WHA) during the 1970s.
 * Similarly, this means that several of the players – like Václav Nedomanský, the Šťastný brothers etc. – joined NHL teams while continuing to play on the Czechoslovak national team, instead of defecting from Communist Czechoslovakia to the west as in OTL.
 * Due to Canada's participation in the fighting in Norway in 1940, as well as their military presence in Norway following World War II, hockey has become one of Norway's most popular sports along with handball, cross-country skiing, biathlon and ski jumping. The Norwegian players are as a result more talented, with more players in the NHL (Norway are thus more on par with OTL's Switzerland). At the World Championship, they have also won a bronze medal and a bronze medal at the European Championship.