Khabarovsk, USSR, 7-15 February
The 1981 World Championship was the 12th World Championship. The tournament was held for the third time in USSR.
USSR, Norway, Sweden and Finland took part in the tournament.
The champion was solved by the teams playing a double series. The championship was won by Sweden, the first time a country other than USSR had won the championship!
Sweden won the tournament’s opening match in front of 35,000 spectators against USSR with 6-1. In a later game, USSR could not beat Sweden by the same goal difference, and on the basis of mutual games, Sweden won the World Championship, despite a better goal difference than USSR. USSR won the silver and Finland bronze.
1 SWEDEN
Thomas Fransson, Jörgen Johansson, Mats Carlsson, Lars-Ove Sjödin, Bengt Carlsson, Stefan Karlsson, Håkan Karlsson, Sören Böström, Per Togner, Christer Kjellqvist, Anders Söderholm, Jan-Erik Callberg, Lars Ångström, Bengt Ramström, Ola Johansson, Mikael Arvidsson, Kent Björk, Håkan Sundin (Head coach)
2 USSR
Sergei Lazarev, Alexander Gospodinov, Vitali Anufrienko, Valeri Botchkov, Eugene Velikanov, Vladimir Korytin, Yuri Lahonin, Leonid Lobachev, Sergei Lomanov, Nikolai Pazdnikov, Alexander Pershin, Vladimir Plavunov, Alexander Rychakov, Vitali Savluk, Alexander Tsyganov, Valeri Eichwald, Viktor Shakalin, Vasili Trofimov (Head coach)
3 FINLAND
Unfortunately no team roster