Roller hockey (quad)

Roller hockey

Argentine player during the 2007 Rink Hockey World Championship.
Highest governing body	World Skate
Nicknames	Roller hockey rink hockey hardball hockey quad hockey
First played	End-19th century Britain
Characteristics
Contact	No
Team members	5 per side, a goal-keeper and four floor players
Mixed-sex	Yes, separate competitions
Type	Team sport ball sport
Presence
Olympic	Demonstration sport at 1992 Summer Olympics.
World Games	1981 – 1993, 2001

Roller hockey (in British English), rink hockey (in American English) or quad hockey is a team sport played on roller skates. It is a quad-skate team sport where two teams face-off against one another, trying to drive a hard ball with their sticks into the opposing teams' goalnet. Each team has five players on the rink at a time, four of whom are skaters and one who is the goalkeeper. The ball can only be put in motion by a stick, not the skate, otherwise a foul will be stated. The game has two 25-minute halves, with 15-minute halftime intermission, plus up to two 5-minute golden goal (a.k.a. "sudden death") periods to settle ties with the clock stopping when the ball becomes dead. If the tie persists, a penalty shootout will determine the winner. Players – including the goalie – use quad skates, whereas inline skates are used in inline hockey. The sticks are similar to those in bandy and shinty. Excessive contact between players is forbidden in rink hockey, unlike inline hockey.

Since 2017, the World Championships for the sport have been part of the World Roller Games organised by World Skate.^[1]

Roller hockey was a demonstration rollersport in the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona. There have been 44 editions of the Roller Hockey World Cup. Countries with the most world titles since the 1940s are: Spain (18 World titles), Portugal (16 World titles), Argentina (6 World titles) and Italy (4 World titles). Other countries, such as France, Brazil, Germany, Switzerland, Andorra and England are regular international competitors, but rarely overcome the traditional powers.

Roller hockey is a very fast sport, which may create a problem for TV transmissions, and new rinks are built using blue or white pavement to make the ball more visible on TV.^{[citation needed]}

Due to the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, World Skate banned Russian and Belarusian athletes and officials from its competitions, and will not stage any events in Russia or Belarus in 2022.^[2]