Bandy World Championships
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The Bandy World Championships are a competition between bandy-playing nations. (They should not be confused with the Bandy World Cup, a club competition.)
Although bandy has been played since the 19th century, the first men's world championships were only played in 1957, and the first women's ones were only in 2004.
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[edit] Participating nations
For a long time, only four countries competed in the world championships: the Soviet Union, Sweden, Finland and Norway, with the Soviet Union as the dominating country. Since then, more countries have joined the tournaments, starting with the United States in 1985. The interest for the sport has spread to other parts of Europe, North America and Asia, and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 also opened the way for separate national teams from the former states of that union.
With more nations competing, the championship is now played in two series, group A for the best 6 teams and group B for the next 6 teams. In each championship, the best team in group B goes into a playoff match with the team who came bottom of the A-group, replacing them if win.
[edit] Bandy World Championships, men
[edit] Bandy World Championships, women
| Year |  Gold |
 Silver |
 Bronze |
Venue |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2004 |  Sweden |
 Russia |
 Finland |
Finland |
| 2006 | Sweden |
Russia |
 Norway |
United States |
