Ice Hockey: Heavy defeat ends British Olympic bid

Great Britain’s bid to qualify for the 2014 Winter Olympics ended in disappointment as they lost 6-0 to Kazakhstan in their final game in Riga, Latvia.

Britain’s chances of qualification from Group E were ended on Friday by a 4-2 defeat to France, but Tony Hand’s troops had high hopes of closing with a win against a side just four places above them in the rankings.

But after impressive showings in the defeat to France and a 6-2 opening loss to Latvia, GB were comprehensively outplayed.

Hull Stingrays netminder Ben Bowns conceded after just 30 seconds of his first international start as Roman Starchenko netted and, just 100 seconds later, it was 2-0 as Konstantin Romanov rifled home a high shot.

After Hand called a time-out, Britain were vastly improved but found themselves short-handed on three occasions, although they kept Kazakhstan at bay.

Hand’s men were in more penalty trouble early in the second period and, with captain Jonathan Phillips and Rod Sarich in the box, Talgat Zhailauov made the two-man advantage count. It became 4-0 when Alexei Litvinenko hammered a fierce shot past Bowns. Just 70 seconds later Kazakhstan had a fifth as Ilya Solarev netted.

Britain had their first power play chance when Solarev went to the box for slashing but sloppily coughed up the puck and Viktor Alexandrov netted a short-handed sixth.