Olympic Sport Review - Hockey

We love Hockey or field Hockey as it is often referred to. Its fast, very physical and end to end. Over the years we have interviewed, spent time with
and watched many international teams and they are amongst the friendliest and most down to earth of all the athletes.

In some form Hockey has been played since Ancient Egyptian times! However, Women’s Hockey only became an Olympic sport in Moscow in 1980 and since then
three nations have dominated it. The Netherlands outstrip all others with seven medals, followed by Argentina with four and Australia with three.

Things may well change this Olympics as there have been a lot of changes made since London 2012 to the match format. Reducing the time from two 35-minute
halves to four 15-minute quarters and two minutes' rest after each period, as well as a fifteen-minute halftime. This may well favour some teams more
than others and improve the flow and intensity of the game. This is not all though, other changes include the implementation of 40-second time outs
following both penalty corner awards and the scoring of a goal. This is a seismic shift in the sport and will definitely cause some upsets, no other
sport is going into the Olympics with so many changes to their format.

Four teams from each group will go through to the knockout phase so don’t expect any surprises at this stage but from then on in there will be that’s for
sure, although Argentina will be a hard act to beat. With a 192 athletes from 12 countries looking for gold this is going to be a very toughly contested
competition. The groups are below:

Group A

China, Germany, Netherlands, New Zealand, South Korea, Spain

Group B

Argentina, Australia, Great Britain, India, Japan, United States

Deodoro Olympic Park is the location of the Olympic Hockey Centre with the competition taking place from the 6^th-19^th of August.