Lauren Powley of the US practices at the Olympic Green Hockey Field in Beijing. (Jamie Squire/Getty Images)
US vs Netherlands Antilles last April. (AP/Ivan Sekretarev)NEW YORK TIMES: You may remember it as something girls played on the unkempt grass fields of your high school. But field hockey at the Olympic level is quite a different sport.
World-class field hockey looks like a high-speed blend of soccer, ice hockey and billiards. With 10 field players and a goalkeeper, the positioning and strategy resemble soccer.
But players pass and shoot with what looks like a snub-nosed ice hockey stick, striking a ball about the size of a cue ball, across composite turf that runs as true and fast as a pool table’s felt.
In the United States, field hockey is almost exclusively a women’s sport, having been brought here in 1901 by the legendary Englishwoman Constance M.K. Applebee.
Worldwide, though, both men and women play. Men’s hockey became an Olympic sport in 1908, in London — and is celebrating its centennial this year — while the women’s version didn’t join the Olympic roster until 1980, in Moscow. (The first women’s gold medal was won by Zimbabwe.)
From 1928 until 1968, either India or Pakistan won every men’s gold medal (and the other usually took the silver). But several European nations plus New Zealand and Australia strengthened their programs, and since 1972, medals have been more widely distributed.
Among the women, Germany, the Netherlands, Australia and Argentina have dominated. Three countries have gold medals to their credit from both their men’s and women’s teams: Australia, Germany and the Netherlands.
Australia is the defending men’s champion from the 2004 Games in Athens; Germany is the defending women’s champion. As with soccer, field hockey has a World Cup and other international competitions in non-Olympic years, and the Swiss-based FIH (Federation International de Hockey) publishes world rankings based on performances at those tournaments.
Going into these Olympic Games, the top-ranked men’s team is Australia and the top-ranked women’s team is the Netherlands. The United States men earned a bronze medal at the 1932 Games in Los Angeles. The American women’s best finish was the bronze medal at Los Angeles in 1984.
They failed to qualify for the past two Olympic Games. For more about the US women: http://www.usfieldhockey.com/history/index.htm.
