Despite some surprising results in the Oceania Cup, which was the last Continental tournament for direct Olympic qualification, hockey giant Australia’s women’s team will join their men’s team in Beijing next year in a quest for gold medals.

After the Oceania Cup, nine of the 12 Olympic participants for both the men’s and the women’s hockey tournament are now finalized:

Men:  Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Korea, Netherlands, Pakistan, South Africa, Spain.

Women: Argentina, Australia, China, Germany, Great Britain, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, South Africa.

Furthermore, the FIH is pleased to release the details of the Olympic qualifying tournaments to be played early 2008.

Men:

North Shore City, Auckland,  New Zealand –  02/10 February 2008
Argentina, Cuba, France, Ireland, New Zealand and Trinidad & Tobago

Santiago, Chile – 01/09 March 2008
Austria, Bangladesh, Chile, Egypt, Great Britain and India

Kakamigahara, Japan – 05/13 April 2008
Czech Republic, Germany, Japan, Malaysia, Poland, Switzerland

The reserve nations for the tournaments (in order) are:
(1)  Netherlands Antilles (2)  USA (3)  Mexico

Women:

Baku, Azerbaijan – 12/20 April 2008
Azerbaijan, Belarus, Chile, Kenya, Spain and Ukraine

Kazan, Russia – 19/27 April 2008
Belgium, Chinese Taipei, India, Netherlands Antilles, Russia and USA

Victoria, Canada – 26 April/04 May 2008
Canada, Cuba, Ireland, Italy, Korea and Malaysia

The reserve nations for these tournaments (in order) are:
(1)   France  (2)  Uruguay  (3)  Barbados

The FIH will now request the National Associations and National Olympic Committees of all teams qualified for both the Olympic Games and the WorldHockey Olympic Qualifiers to confirm their participation.  In the event that a nation does not accept the invitation to participate in a qualifier, it will be replaced directly by the reserve nations in order of world ranking.