According to Wikipedia, "[t]he British national ice hockey team pulled off a major upset when they won the gold medal [in ice hockey at the 1936 Olympics]" – and it's surely true that even today, anyone hearing about this win for the first time would be quite surprised.
Ice Hockey was first included in the Olympic Games in 1920, when there were no Winter Olympics; it was part of the Antwerp games. Canada won the first Olympic ice hockey tournament, and they also won the next three, at the first three Winter Olympics (Chamonix in 1924, St. Moritz in 1928, and Lake Placid in 1932). In 1936 they were runners–up to Great Britain; since the Second World War (starting with St. Moritz again in 1948) they have won five more golds, three more silvers, and three bronze medals.
Following the opening statement quoted above, Wikipedia goes somewhat over the top in its assessment of what Great Britain's team achieved in 1936: "the first team ever to win an Olympic, World, and European (its second) Championships and the first to win all three in the same year."
In fact, as Wikipedia itself states previously, the 1936 Olympic ice hockey tournament "also serv[ed] as the 10th World Championships and the 21st European Championships." So any European team that won the tournament would automatically have won all three titles.
Great Britain's other European title came in the first championships, in 1910. Only four teams took part – the other three being Belgium, Germany and Switzerland; each team played all the others in a "round robin" format, and Britain topped the League table with two wins and a tie.
© Haydn Thompson 2020