Tuesday 07 / May / 2024
MUSCAT: The FIH Hockey Olympic Qualifier will begin in Muscat today as eight teams will vie for the three direct tickets to the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris.
The newly-built Oman Hockey stadium is set to host both groups matches as the pool A comprises Great Britain, Malaysia, Pakistan and China while Pool B features Germany, New Zealand, Canada and Chile. Muscat city is among the three cities around the World to host the Hockey Olympic Qualifier beside Valencia (Espain) and Ranchi (India).
The 2024 FIH Hockey Olympic Qualifier event will begin on Monday with four matches being played.
The Germany team will take on Canada in the opener at 14:00 and this match will be followed by New Zealand and Chile which will start at 16:15.
Then, Malaysia will play against China at 18:30 and Great Britain will face Pakistan at 20:45. It is expected that the opening round of group matches will be very tough as all the teams look to register victory to keep their hopes high for the semifinals.
The playing format in the Hockey Olympic Qualifier will be based on the league system from round one as the first and second ranked teams in each pool will advance to the semi-finals and the top three teams will secure tickets to Olympic Games.
The third and fourth ranked teams in the pool will play classification matches for 5th to 8th positions. The group matches will run until Thursday. On Saturday, the semifinal matches and classification matches will take place while the following day the final match and bronze winner will be decided.
The team manager of China team, Wang Haiqin, said that the players began their preparations for the FIH Hockey Olympic Qualifier early as they had booked the ticket in the Asian Games in China last September.
“It was not an easy task to secure the ticket from the Asian continent. Thanks to the team heroes as they managed to earn one of tickets to reach the final stage of the qualifier,” he said
Commenting on his expectation on the matches, he responded: "It is expected to be a tough fight as all the participating teams are top ranked. Furthermore, the China team has been allotted a very tough group which comprises Germany. We will work hard to vie for one of the spots of the Olympic Games. The team went to many training sessions a couple of days ago in Muscat. It is difficult to talk about the team’s chances but I am assured that the team members will perform well,” he ended
The head coach of New Zealand, Greg Nicol, affirmed that the team started their preparatory programme a few weeks ago. “The team had organised some joint camps with Malaysia and South Korea teams. The team arrived in Muscat on January 3 and began their camp ahead of the actual start of the competition. The focus is on preparing the players physically for the matches and creating different technical plans against the opposing teams. I am confident that our team will produce a good show in the event. However, currently we will concentrate on the group matches,” he added
“We are very pleased to be here in Oman as the country has top hockey facilities. It is great to see the growth of Oman in hockey and they have some players who got opportunities to play abroad. Moreover, the new hockey infrastructure will support the nation to develop further in hockey,” he ended
