Women’s ice hockey game
Toilet breakdown at the start of the German Olympics
Updated February 5, 2026 – 8:06 p.mReading time: 1 min.
The national ice hockey players were the first German athletes to compete at the 2026 Winter Olympics. A strange situation arose on the sidelines of the game.
The Winter Olympics in Milan and Cortina d’Ampezzo will not officially open until Friday evening with the big ceremony in the legendary San Siro football stadium. In fact, the Olympics started on Wednesday when the first curling athletes competed. On Thursday, the first German athletes were in action: the national ice hockey players.
In their first appearance, the DEB women ultimately had to admit defeat to the Swedish team 1:4 (1:1, 0:2, 0:1), despite taking an early lead. In the fight for the hoped-for place in the quarter-finals, the national ice hockey team fell behind early on. In addition to the pure result, the game also had a strange story: the Swedish team had to struggle with a toilet problem.
“A toilet was out of order,” confirmed Sweden’s national coach Ulf Lundberg on TV station SVT after the game. Double goal scorer Lina Ljungblom wanted to go to the toilet during the first period break and discovered that the toilet had overflowed. Together with teammate Jessica Adolfsson, she presented the topic to the German team: The Swedish duo asked if they could use the DEB toilet, but were refused.
“If Germany doesn’t want to provide the toilet, that’s their business, it’s not that bad,” said Sweden’s Anna Kjellbin, despite the tricky situation. The toilet problem was finally solved at the start of the second third.
